There Can Be Only One!

[molten]

There Can Be Only One!
http://www.blackborder.com/q/node/3751

Patrick dabbles into Highlander and presents his weapon of choice, thoughts on the format and a tournament report!

http://www.blackborder.com/q/node/3751

[Nastaboi]

I enjoyed the last paragraph.

The format was enjoyable and very diverse, so I think the creators of the banned list got most things right. I'm still puzzled by the non-inclusion of Gifts Ungiven, Library of Alexandria and Demonic Tutor though, as their power-level is miles above some other banned cards. Gifts Ungiven is an instant speed double Demonic Tutor, and is even better than that if you have Regrowth effects or Life from the Loam in your deck. Demonic Tutor also strikes me as miles better than the recently banned Enlightened Tutor. Library of Alexandria single-handedly dominates games with the card advantage it creates and puts a monetary hurdle on players, as those without the resources to get Library are clearly disadvantaged. While Mishra's Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad are the other two power lands that are not banned, they are only useful in very specific decktypes, so there is no necessity to pick these up. Library of Alexandria on the other hand is useful in all control or mid-range decks, which is a majority of the format from what I've seen so far. Some of the graveyard combo parts could probably be unbanned because of the inherent weakness of combo described in the previous paragraphs. There's an incentive to run graveyard hate anyway because of Gifts Ungiven/Intuition/Life from the Loam, so all graveyard-based strategies will suffer from the splash damage.

He also wrote combo off too easily, I and many other have had success with various combo decks.