At least the first council member admit...
*the 3rd
There is a large discussion at the Highlander Magic Europe group on facebook which was originally about the watchlist. The players (including me) were wondering why the council came up with the list one week late and gave us no explanations about the changes. As more and more questions came up, I tagged Vazdru, Maqi, Payron and Dr. Opossum. (I only have these 4 as friends on FB) After half a day Payron and Dr. Opossum gave us each a wall of text, which I will post now. (none of the other members posted anything yet)
I would recommend to get yourself a facebook account (does not have to be your real name) and head over to
https://www.facebook.com/groups/HighlanderEurope/?ref=bookmarks to get all informations.
Payron:Hi guys,
First of all I wanted to tell you, that I am sorry I can’t give your every answer you want at this point. I told already some people in my closer circle, that I can’t put to much energy into this discussion right now because I am in the end of my studies and therefore need to focus on myself first. For everybody which doesn’t know me I am a player from Erfurt and the newest member of the council. I read like every comment of the FB discussions after the banning seasons just you know.
First of all there where some pretty good points made here. Dion is right about the watchlist cards come on and off with every members votes and not every argument is will change the mind of another council member, therefore this list changes quite a bit and cards will be elected by 2 votes from 8. I see that this brings a lot of confusion to the people and we should discuss, if this makes sense for us in the future. In my mind the watchlist is a tool, that we can outline, which cards we should focus on for the next season. It makes it easier to focus for us and not to surprise everybody with a totally new unbanned / banned card. The argument was made quite often that we vote just on personal opinions and I got to tell you that this is a big part of it, but we can’t realy change this because of the lack of data. Wald Wolf wants to delete all the expensive cards for good reason. It’s to expensive for newcomers, but then you want to drop also HL for Canadian HL, which is by far even more expensive. I think HL is an eternal format and we need the old cards kind of, but we need to watch out if they are to strong in the meta right now. (obv)
I am totally on Jan Knarr’s side, if you guys want to discuss here we need a guideline, why we need to ban and unban cards. You guy’s are could be right about skullclamp, but I want to ask you: What will this change do for the meta and which problems does it fix? In my mind we should unban cards, if we have a healthy meta and can afford to try something. So the first question would be: Do we have a healthy meta right now? Some here say yes and some here say no? Again we have out major issue with gathering data. And at this point I want to thank Dion for his work (and I guess nobody realy knows how much work this is expect a few people) to upload so much decklists. Also a HUGE project was started by Jörn Franke, who started working on our Highlander Decks section on MKM and gathered a lot of datas to upload, them and I was happy to support him within this project. You guys can find here events, which are going back to 2005. So this would be a good source if you need data. Thank you guys so much for this work.
I am now about 1 year in the council and I don’t know if everything goes right (or everything goes wrong?), but there are people which put a lot of passion and effort in projects for the community. We are small and we do the best to evaluate Changes to the Meta, with the Data we got.
My personal opinion right now: I think we have a pretty healthy metagame right now, but it could be that some busted decks are over the top, which still fly under the radar. This Banning season was kind of bad for you guys and I am sorry for that. I had the feeling everybody thinks the metagame is healthy right now and therefore we don’t need any big explanations, I guess we were wrong in this point.
You guys want us to evaluate the Meta on data (which we realy try to gather, but we also need your help) or do you want us to say: We think entomb and Academy and Oath are over the top cards and we have no data that they have the consistency to win every event, but we ban them anyways?! I think that would be the opposite of good work.
In the end I want just to state skullclamp as an example, I could see this unbanned, but my question is also, what does it achieve in out meta. If there is a boogie man in the format right now It might be some combo deck or just reanimator. In this case skullclamp, will make the midrange fights more random and one sided and the boogie man just doesn’t care because they try to ignore the other side of the battlefield anyways.
Thanks again for everybody, which puts so much work in our format. The players, which travel miles to every event, people collecting and uploading events, people building up the local community and doing planning events for us and everybody who puts effort in a good discussion.
Greetings
Jan
Dr. Opossum:At the same time I wrote a similar length of text parallel to Jan. However, I would describe a few things less embellished. So let's get it more spicy. ^^
a. The Council
All the anger of the last days about the changes, the participation, motivation, all the discontent about our work and displeasure on MPO, in the groups, etc. is deserved. The Council has this self-inflicted and no one wants to gloss over that. Not only you are dissatisfied. The lack of motivation in the community and in the council itself also disturbs the few active council members. With 100 excuses for inactivity, some members are clinging to a position that obviously and for a long time can not be filled. "I have a family." "We do not currently play Highlander in my area." "I write exams." "I actively participated 700 years ago." "That will surely change again soon." No, it will not. An exam should not be responsible for not making your votes within the deadline. Activity is measured by current engagement and collaboration and not by successes of x years ago. And if you are involved in other duties for a long time, the Council position is obviously not workable for you. With occasional posts in the forum activity is fooled where none is.
I am pleased to hear from our Finnish community members how active Juha and Toumas seem to be in their region. I am also surprised by Juha's post because the only part I can really confirm as a Council member is the "I could not find words" part. So many Finnish people are regularly posting decklists here, participating in the discussions, posting event links. The connection to the Finnish region is due to you, the Finnish community. Without this group, the rest of the council would have no idea what is actually happening in Finland. Do not get me wrong, I will not take me out there. EVERY individual Council member is, in my opinion, unable to perform his duties to the extent that is desirable.
b. Watchlist Changes
Why does the watchlist exist? WotC does not need a list, so why us? The big problem of the watchlist is not in their length or the cards on it. The big problem is the difference in definition. Our goal is not to pinpoint as many community members as possible, to confuse or to threaten with a ban / unban. WotC manages formats that have a much larger player base. Potential Bannings and Unbannings can be guessed on Pro tours or Grand Prix. We do not have this luxury here. Far too little "big tournaments" are just a sample of potentially problematic decks or cards. So, to prepare players for at least a little bit on POSSIBLE changes, the watchlist was invented. This does NOT mean that these cards are actually banned / unbaned. It just means that these cards have to be watched in the current format and have to be monitored and discussed more intensely by ALL Community and Council members. The watchlist is considered a "snapshot". So against this background, I see no reason to remove or shorten the watchlist. However, even within the Council, not all members share my definition and also the community repeatedly has different views on the watchlist formulated by us. Therefore, I understand the criticism of the list absolutely.
c. Transparency
The rules within the council forbid me to talk about the votes and opinions of other specific members. This should primarily protect individuals from fortunately FEW unnecessarily aggressive "wolves". It means that it is up to the Council Members themselves to publish their personal votes. I'm not very interested in whether other people like this rule. Personally, I find it really useful if hostility, incitement and over-emotionalism shape discussions instead of productive criticism. Although the Council is far from being innocent of the current situation, specific responses are inappropriate.
Nonetheless, the watch and ban list apparently reflects a common denominator. The Council members are people with strong beliefs and we all have a very stubborn view of the format. That does not seem to be much different among community members. At Scullclamp, Mystical Tutor and Co the minds part. A common denominator has the big problem that it does not really satisfy anyone. Everybody votes for his perfect outcome and at the end you have a list with the overlaps. In my opinion, a meaningful list can be achieved less with majorities of individual votings - OUTCOMES must be discussed. Common denominators are feasible only with the procedure and the basic rules (What do all of us want? What do we not want? for example: first-turn kills, etc.). But: Highlander consists of two very different groups. The first one wants a T2, Modern or Legacy comparable format and a most competitive atmosphere. The others want the broadest possible pool of cards to use in kitchen table rounds, play iconic old cards that they can not play in other formats and still attend a bigger tournament every now and then. Obviously, both groups are necessary and important for the continuation of the format, which has its roots in small playgroups.
d. Future
I still believe that a council is the most meaningful solution, as long as accessibility, voting guidelines, process, anonymity and protection against voting abuse are not clarified. However, I like to admit that the Council is not much more productive in the form in which it is. However, that will not change as long as inactive council members stick to their position.
I also do not think Canadian Highlander is the solution to the problem. Our format is shrinking because no proxies are allowed for small-scale tournaments. The most meaningful task of the Council would therefore be rather to establish the connection between tournament organizers and their region. If necessary, explain and initiate playgroups on how to host Highlander tournaments without Store Owner. The expensive entry into the format certainly will not be easier with the "Unban" of all cards.
On the other hand, a ban of the Reserved List is similarly problematic. The lack of duals would generate a completely new format, which also requires a completely new banned list. At worst, we end up with similar problem as the modern highlander attempt a few years earlier (limited choice of cards, decks can not/ rarely cope with more than 3 colors, splitting of the community).
However, if the community's desire for alternative formats grows and threatens to erode the current format, I agree and support it if this is what wanted. Overall, the mood in recent polls about the current banned list was very positive. Many of you would have noticed that everyone, like the Council, has their own ideas of the optimal format. "Somehow satisfied" is therefore a condition that I can personally live with. That's why I've put my votings for bannings (for example the tutors, specific cards) behind personal views.
