Ban the Fetchlands

[TobiR]

This is just for me to see how far off I am with my opinion regarding the fetchlands I don't know if this has been discussed before, I just would like to hear peoples take on this.

I think the fetchlands (Onslaught flooded, Strand, Polluted Delta, etc and Zendikar Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, etc) aren't good for the format.

Reasons:

1. shuffling takes waaaayyyy too much time. Shuffling before games is already a time consuming activity with a 100 card deck. I don't have a study to back me up on this, but I have the feeling that in 3 games against a 3 or 4 colour deck 10 minutes are devoted to shuffling. That sounds like an exaggeration, but think about your last game against 4 colour Blood. Think about the shuffling before the game, the cutting/shuffling you do with your opponents deck, mulligan shuffling, first fetchland searching/shuffling, cutting/shuffling your opp.'s deck, second fetchland searching/shuffling, cutting/shuffling your opp.'s deck, tutor searching/shuffling, cutting/shuffling your opp.'s deck, third fetchland.... I'll stop here. Playing a lot on cockatrice makes you forget how time consuming these actions really are. But in a real life card game you are forced to watch your opponent shuffle for a loooooong time. Don't get me wrong, shuffling will always be a part of the game with all its various tutor effects, but the Fetchlands take this to another level by adding an additional 7-10 fetch effects to almost every deck playing at least two colours ( for example even Izzet decks often play delta, strand, tarn, foothills, mesa, mire, rainforest)

2. banning the fetchlands would strengthen peoples deck-/manabase-building skills. Right now you can just jam all the on-colour duals and x fetchlands in your deck and call it a day because fetchlands work as duals and basic lands at the same time.

3. It would weaken multicolour decks by creating a downside to playing multiple colours. We all know that 4 colour blood is the best deck in the format because it combines incredibly powerful cards from 4 different colours with perplexing consistency. I find it weird that a deck with 4 colours is perhaps the most consistent in the format. Having access to 4 colours allows this deck to play so many threats that basically do the same (undercosted powerful creatures, powerful planeswalkers, really good removal, etc), therefore bypassing the thought of highlander as a format where every game feels different.

4. It wouldn't kill multicolour decks, they just have to adapt to playing different lands. There are so many sets of duals and dual coloured manlands out there that building a multi colour manabase is still easily possible without having fetchlands around.Furthermore there are enough signets, talismans, keyrunes, etc around to give you colour fixing/ramp without playing green.

(5. It would weaken dredge cards. Without fetchlands filling up the yard, DTT and TCruise would be reduced to an acceptable powerlevel) -> this is just my hate for TCruise.  Think of it as an extra argument

To draw a conclusion, I think the fetchlands make people wait for searching/shuffling instead of playing magic for an unnessecarily long period of time and have created an environment in which there is absolutely no downside to playing 3 or 4 colours (I know that blood moon, back to basics, etc are in the format, but they've been for quite some time and it hasn't slowed Blood decks down/stopped them from winning tounaments one bit). The latter has the affect that creatures like siege rhino, which have their multicolour casting cost as their only downside, are basically cards without downside at all, creating a disadvantage for every deck which limits itself to fewer colours. Right now, this isn't problematic because we have a diverse metagame (in part thanks to people playing their pet decks instead of the strongest) but I doubt that this will hold with multicolour decks (especially Blood) winning more and more tournaments all the while Wizards is printing more and more powerful multicolour cards.


Thank you in advance for your answers.

[Vazdru]

thx for sharing your ideas making our format better
in fact the question to ban fetchlands for the reasons you pointed out has been raised in our discussions too
there has been even a tournament with fetchlands banned already to have a look on its effect a few years ago: http://mtgpulse.com/event/11331#157551
maybe a Finn can give you some feedback if it is making the whole game-play feel that much better
maybe there will be another tournament like this in the future to get a better insight on the effects
Imo you are right in your analysis that highlander matches take longer than matches in other formats in average, partly caused by that many shuffle effects (one reason why hl matches already scheduled for 60 Min/round and not 50 Min/round like in DCI-tournaments)
Imo you are right that 4C Blood performs quite consitently especially because of fetchlands (btw. 5C Aggro was one of the strongest deck in the meta for a while based on the same fact: http://mtgpulse.com/event/4985#65644)
nevertheless this approach doesn' t have a majority neither in the council nor in the community currently as far I can overlook the state of discussion but maybe you will find some more supporters having started this thread 

[TobiR]

"nevertheless this approach doesn' t have a majority neither in the council nor in the community"

Could  you explain to me why the council is against a fetchland ban please? Just asking because your comments makes it seem like you support my arguments against the fetchlands.
Thank you

[Vazdru]

well, this i a hard question I guess there are many reasons
speaking for myself I would say this is just a too big shift of our well-established format
the effects are unforeseeable and maybe it would just lead to a more monotone metagame with a higher number of RDW, UW and blue-based control-decks and/or higher number of unsatisfied players 
there are different approaches for a change - have a look at Berlin, where Modern Highlander has been introduced, there is another approach to ban all duals and expensive cards like Bazhaar, Workshop, Jace, Lili, Tarmogoyf etc to attract some new players
personally I like the format like it is currently, but you are right, the game-play could be smoother sometimes we are working on that

[MMD]

supporter

haven´t changed my mind, just the explanation would look a little different today:

http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=584.msg5884#msg5884
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=819.msg7784#msg7784

and here is the link to the old main topic of banning fetchlands:

http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=583.0

[Tiggupiru]

I am also with the banning.

I was really hoping the change of mulligan would have been sufficient, but I don't think it had the desired effect. I've written lengthy explanations before and I don't think any of the key arguments have changed.

The small tournament we did was fun, but it was short and merely a single tournament, so there is not much conclusions we can draw from that. Impact on the metagame cannot be estimated until after the banning. Metagame analysis takes so much data it isn't something we can accurately assume from a tournament or two. I think we have enough data now to say that the mulligan switch didn't fix the promblems the fetchland cause.

Only thing we can learn from the testing for fetchless format is the enjoyment people doing it have. It is very personal and impossible to gauge, but it is the best we got. I would love to try my hand at another similar tournament.

[Kenshin]

I do agree mostly.

The combination of fetchlands and duals is the best color fixing magic has to offer. Especially in our 100 card signleton format searching for the colors you lack is powerful. Since it is really hard to get synergistic decks going with only one-ofs, apart from some two-card combos, highlander decks in general benefit from cards that are strong on their own. Multicolor cards are, by design, stronger than monocolored ones because they should come with the price of wonky mana. In the current card pool they are unfortunately without risk, apart from very few cards like Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon and Back to Basics, which unfortunately do not solve the problem the already established board poses.

Legacy does not suffer from the singleton problem. Synergies and plans can beat sick mana. Additinonally, if you tend to lose to colorfull decks you can pack 4 Wasteland in 60 cards. Most highlander decks pack a Wasteland and maybe a Tectonic Edge in 100 cards. The format is significantly slower than Legacy or modern, where mana issues will be punished by the opponents fast execution of his game plan.

Since 4-Color-Blood seems mostly solved, by which I mean the teams testing it figured out a pretty precise range of slots devoted to a certain card type, all it does is replace cards in said slots by strictly superior new ones. All it has to do is slightly adjust the mana base, if necessary. The deck literally has everything, save counters and instant card draw, good magic cards offer. At no real cost. The early game is better because they have powerful cards at every casting cost, the late game is better because the power level is just higher. The deck almost never stumbles on mana, unless the player makes mistakes.

The new mulligan solved the problem with the four- or five-color aggro archetypes that played less than 30 lands and had their curve stop at two or three. They just abused the mulligan. Unfortunately after fixing that problem we are now made aware that there is another, more fundamental, problem in the availability of colored mana for all archetypes. It is just Blood that benefits the most from it and exploits it the best.

The dangerous part is, that the format is mostly stable and has a very small player base where a hand full of players dropping the format might mean the end of everything. Radical changes might alienate several people, although the change, or testing thereof, is more than necessary in my opinion. We should try to see how the format looks without fetches or without the original duals. But as we can see from the current standard, even though it is not directly comparable as a 60 card four-of format, fetches and duals of any sort in combination always results in wacky four-color decks, unless there is anything to keep it in check like readily available land destruction or powerful monocolored cards. And WotC just seems to refuse to print those, because most are deemed unfun by the casual community. I could go into a rant over that, but that is an entirely different topic. The point is, the problem will, in all likelyhood, not solve itself.

I can understand the reservations about this drastic measure but it would probably be in the best interest of format diversity to have tests over a longer period of time to collect sufficient data.

[Vazdru]

oha, maybe I was wrong with my thesis, the majority do not support this idea 
i ponder to do the next online season with watchlist cards banned + fetchlands banned
don't get me wrong, it is not decided ... i just tinker with that idea
maybe I create two registrations and the one with more participants will run?
what do you think?

[Nastaboi]

I support this.

One more reason: it makes deck building more budget friendly. ZEN fetchlands are not cheap, and budget players should cope without access to RV duals, as other non-fetchable dual lands are abundant.

[TobiR]

@vazdru: I think the idea of a online league without fetchlands is cool, but I don't if people are willing to do this because you also want to test your deck for the actual environment with fetchlands.

There has been some support for the bannings (and so far no one who completely disagrees ). Will the council discuss this idea (or start a poll or whatever)?

[Vazdru]

@vazdru: I think the idea of a online league without fetchlands is cool, but I don't if people are willing to do this because you also want to test your deck for the actual environment with fetchlands.

There has been some support for the bannings (and so far no one who completely disagrees ). Will the council discuss this idea (or start a poll or whatever)?

yes, it will be discussed
as Nastaboi outed himself as supporter be sure you will have an advocate for this issue already

after the feedback I've got I will create an registration for next online season where you can choose between:

A) regular tournament
B) tournament with fetchlands & watchlist cards banned
C) = A)+B)

the one with more participants will run, I looking forward to that experiment