Which are the strongest decks right now?

[Lotus]

I just want to know what you think are the strongest decks right now (after the banning of Yagwil, Academy, Flash, Hulk and Balance)

I myself like to play some kind of control and i am not quite sure wether i want to play oath-stax or 5c oath-control...

[Sturmgott]

I personally think - and strongly hope! - that there is no strongest deck. If there was, we wouldn't have done our job well

[Lotus]

Of cause you are right by saying there is no "the best deck". Which deck is good always depends largely on the metagame.
But there are always Decks having a good matchup against a lot of other decks. You can watch out for them in every Format like: Typ1= Stax Typ1.5= GROW 1.X= Aggro Loam Typ 2= Blick-touch. Of cause there are always decks that have a good matchup even against these Deck, but still you can never prevent the exsistance of Decks with good match-ups against most others.
This is why i think you should not change the banned list to often:
- Like i already said there will always be very strong decks, you cant prevent that
- If you ban all good control and combo cards it will soon be like in Legacy (there are no realy good control decks anymore)
- You are always losing players through new banning (I have one friend that played TPS, he realy liked it and he got most of the cards foil, which took him a lot of time and money. With the new bannings the deck is now completly useless. He was very upset and now he is not playing highlander anymore. => Also my personal opinion to this is that TPS was good and if he had a good starting hand it was realy hard to beat. But still it wasn't too broken because there are a couple of things that broke his neck: Amageddon, countering his Gifts, removing his grave.....)

[Sturmgott]

...
- If you ban all good control and combo cards it will soon be like in Legacy (there are no realy good control decks anymore)
- You are always losing players through new banning (I have one friend that played TPS, he realy liked it and he got most of the cards foil, which took him a lot of time and money. With the new bannings the deck is now completly useless. He was very upset and now he is not playing highlander anymore. => Also my personal opinion to this is that TPS was good and if he had a good starting hand it was realy hard to beat. But still it wasn't too broken because there are a couple of things that broke his neck: Armageddon, countering his Gifts, removing his grave.....)

Of course we know we can't prevent strong decks, and more so we don't want to prevent them. The opposite is the case: We WANT strong decks, and we WANT as many viable archetypes as possible. The presence of very strong combo decks like Hulk/Flash or TPS was prevents alot of decks from being viable.

We didn't make banning Yawgmoth's Will an easy decision on us, we had long discussions about this. In the end the arguments of those who dislike pure combo decks were stronger than those arguing pro combo.

And if you say we lost a player because of a banning, then I have to say: This person is obviously not interested in playing Highlander, but rather in playing their TPS deck. I understand that they are upset about "banning their deck", but please take into account that truly many players hate playing vs. pure combo because of the total lack of interaction these decks strive for. And still: has he tried to make the deck work like the Legacy version ("Iggy Pop")? That one operates without Yawgmoth's Will (because it's not available) and instead makes use of Ill-Gotten-Gains.

One more question goes to you: Why do you think our decisions lead to the absence of good control decks? Just the opposite is the case!

[Lotus]

Maybe the TPS player will start playing again, but at least you made him very angry

You also banned Balance which was very good for control decks and the Academy which was very important for Stax-Decks (which are control-decks as well)...okay maybe you are right with banning Balance its realy a game breaking Card. But why the Academy? wouldn't it be enough to ban the Workshop? This wouldnt have hurt the Stax deck too much and it is a very expensive card which a lot of players can't afford.

[Sturmgott]

We felt that Stax really needed to be weakened not just a bit, but alot. Thus we decided to steal the deck's strongest - and by far most broken card. See points 4 and 5 of our banning policy (also see http://www.highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=faq#4 ):

4. React to the metagame should certain deck types begin to dominate;
5. If a deck can merely exists due to a "broken" card, this deck loses the right to exist. The "broken" card must be banned.

With Stax being the second most played archetype and placing 2,3,8,9 on last GP's Swiss, point 4 was obviously the case: Stax had begun to dominate, the only decks being able to beat Stax being ultra fast combo and mega artifact hate decks. Besides that, Stax had already won the GP before that one.

In addition to that, the presence of very strong Stax decks changed the environment in respect of every deck having to face mass land destruction: Armageddon, Ravages of War, Wildfire, Devastation, Burning of Xinjie, Upheaval, Decree of Annihilation - all in ONE, already very strong deck. We felt that such a deck should no longer have access to such a broken card as Tolarian Academy. Clearing the board of lands, and directly afterwards being able to play a land that gives you 6+ BLUE mana every time you tap it just sent the deck over the top.

Players needed quite a while to bring the Academy to its full potential (which was what we wanted to achieve when we did the great banned list reset in January 2006: have the players prove which cards are too strong!).

Of course Mishra's Workshop is indeed a very strong card in the deck as well, and as such, is still being closely observed. Yet the Workshop primarily shows its power in first or second turns of the game. After that, the Academy will almost always be the so much stronger card, not speaking about its mid- or lategame appearance. Plus, the Academy can be abused alot more.

[Vazdru]

We shouldn't forget RDW which have had a great performance in the past tourneys (quite better than e.g. 5c-Oath and Captain America). Maybe R/G will take its place but I'm not sure about that. Firesgeddon should be mentioned too.

[Lotus]

I have added RDW and Firesgeddon now  . I myself don't like to play Beatdown or Slight-Decks this is maybe why i didn't think about these two decks while creating the poll  .

[TheOnlyOne]

In a "healty" meta with a good amount of interaction they exist a good bunch of creatures, and oath is good against creature heavy decks, Oath/Abyss/Moat/SolitaryConfinment, can dominate the board and because of them, a Deck "need" to have Enchantment Removal.

Deck that tend to be broken, are almost only Combo, so a banned List tends to "correct" combo decks.
Highlander has the problem that you dont have a sideboard to change your gameplan to your opponent, and most Combos can only be disrupted if your deck "can" play something do disrupt the combo, a maindeck "Extract" should be not normal, Boil, Rack and Ruin, etc.

Its nearly impossible to create a format in which you can have 5+ Decks and no possible strategie being dominant.
If u can have RDW, RG, UG, WW, WR(boros), etc. all creature based, so Oath can be dominant, a problem ofcourse, because it makes the creature decks better which have the tools to beat Oath in our example meta, UG(w/b) for example, or tuned WW with some enchantment removal 2drops.

It "should" be good if u can manage to get 5 "good" Tier1 decks and 5 Rogue like decks, not each strategy can be good in the meta, its simply impossible to do, because if ur meta is not creature based Oath suxx, if your meta is full of WW, RDW suxx, if everything is around, UG can be good because of the good Toolbox it can have.

So if u ask me, which deck "is" the strongest, Oath style decks tend to be strong, especially if your friends play creature heavy.

[TheOnlyOne]

Another way to play Highlander is the more controll oriented way, like KA-Highlander is trying to do, just because the people like to play Controll/Combo and dislike the Aggro they all know from Legacy/Standard.

Its another way to manage the Highlander Format, you can discuss if its better, but its simply another way to play the format.

Ka-Highlander plays with some other Rules:
30life instead of 20life.
Another banned list, according to the changed format nature.
7 cards simply free Mulligan like 2Headed-Giant.

Games tend to be longer, like Controll-Controll, and so games tend to be more skillfull, simply because u nearly never lose because you are overwellmed by an weenie army and a screw isnt that bad, same for flood.

Its really another Format, its simply Controll-Highlander, just that u know that their are always at least two ways to go, beside Singelton ...

[Mythrandir]

Another way to play Highlander is the more controll oriented way, like KA-Highlander is trying to do, just because the people like to play Controll/Combo and dislike the Aggro they all know from Legacy/Standard.

Its another way to manage the Highlander Format, you can discuss if its better, but its simply another way to play the format.

Ka-Highlander plays with some other Rules:
30life instead of 20life.
Another banned list, according to the changed format nature.
7 cards simply free Mulligan like 2Headed-Giant.

Games tend to be longer, like Controll-Controll, and so games tend to be more skillfull, simply because u nearly never lose because you are overwellmed by an weenie army and a screw isnt that bad, same for flood.

Its really another Format, its simply Controll-Highlander, just that u know that their are always at least two ways to go, beside Singelton ...

i play highlander because my deck has loads of options, but sometimes against WW or RDW i dont have the time to do nothing.. and that kind of sucks =/

[Vazdru]

I've made 320 games with different decks meanwhile:

Place 1:
5C-OATH, 62,86% Wins (44-26)

Place 2:
R/G-Beatz, 58,82% Wins (10-7)

Place 3:
BorosDeckWins, 55,71% Wins (39-31)

...Tokenmania Place 5 with 54,10% Wins (33-28)

I voted for RDW, but it's only Place 8 with 51,22% Wins (21:20 - 2:4 RG-Beatz, 3-5 Oath) 

[Mythrandir]

I've made 320 games with different decks meanwhile:

Place 1:
5C-OATH, 62,86% Wins (44-26)

Place 2:
R/G-Beatz, 58,82% Wins (10-7)

Place 3:
BorosDeckWins, 55,71% Wins (39-31)

...Tokenmania Place 5 with 54,10% Wins (33-28)

I voted for RDW, but it's only Place 8 with 51,22% Wins (21:20 - 2:4 RG-Beatz, 3-5 Oath) 

no 5c control?

[Vazdru]

I've made 320 games with different decks meanwhile:

Place 1:
5C-OATH, 62,86% Wins (44-26)

Place 2:
R/G-Beatz, 58,82% Wins (10-7)

Place 3:
BorosDeckWins, 55,71% Wins (39-31)

...Tokenmania Place 5 with 54,10% Wins (33-28)

I voted for RDW, but it's only Place 8 with 51,22% Wins (21:20 - 2:4 RG-Beatz, 3-5 Oath) 

no 5c control?

Sure ! I evaluated my opponent's decks as well ;P

5C-Control: Place 12 with 48,57% Wins (34-36)

-> that means that we have already played 70 games vs each other !!!

AND

-> i'm still an edge ahead 

EDIT: i've forgotten your Big Red on place 17 with 2:3 -> already 75 games!

[Mythrandir]

I've made 320 games with different decks meanwhile:

Place 1:
5C-OATH, 62,86% Wins (44-26)

Place 2:
R/G-Beatz, 58,82% Wins (10-7)

Place 3:
BorosDeckWins, 55,71% Wins (39-31)

...Tokenmania Place 5 with 54,10% Wins (33-28)

I voted for RDW, but it's only Place 8 with 51,22% Wins (21:20 - 2:4 RG-Beatz, 3-5 Oath) 

no 5c control?

Sure ! I evaluated my opponent's decks as well ;P

5C-Control: Place 12 with 48,57% Wins (34-36)

-> that means that we have already played 70 games vs each other !!!

AND

-> i'm still an edge ahead 

EDIT: i've forgotten your Big Red on place 17 with 2:3 -> already 75 games!

not too bad 34-36
specially since u play faster decks, but i want to settle the score.
only need to win 3 more games, then never play with you .. lol, just kidding.