Reasons for our banning decisions Season III-2010

[Sturmgott]

Library of Alexandria

“We want to test how the unbanning of LoA will influence the highlander meta […]”
We unbanned LoA and Mind of Matter on 01.10.2008. The card was about one year and nine
months legal. Now we´ve decided to ban it again. Why? Similar to the Survival of the Fittest
ban multiple reasons occurred to justify the re-banning:

• Availability: The card is very expensive and each player who decided to play a control
deck needs this card.
• Frustration: Players get frustrated if their opponent reveals a 1st turn (lucky draw) LoA
and if they don’t have a fast aggro deck or an immediate answer they feel upset about
it even though a early LoA don’t lead automatic to a win.
• No LoA means no “optimal” control deck: People want to play optimal decks there for
they need the best cards that are available for the archetype. So a lot of players decide
not to play a control deck since they don’t have the optimal cards for their decks. If
they don’t want to play any aggro or combo builds they don’t play anyway which
means less players for the format.
• Type 1 is not sexy: We´ve spoke with many players which are interested in highlander
and they are concerned about the card pool. A lot of people who play Legacy are not
willing to invest so many resources into Vintage (which has already a small pool of
players) since its way too expensive. LoA is one of the cards which are a “must have”
card if you decide to play T1. We don’t want to scare people away from highlander
with cards like this.
• Randomness: A LoA in a control mirror increase the odds of winning a lot. As
Umezawa's Jitte in aggro matchups determine the win by pure randomness the same is
true for LoA in a control mirror (In my opionion Jitte is much more devastating).

In summary we can say LoA is a) not necessary and b) harmful for our format. A lot of
players are not willing to play highlander if LoA is legal so we´ve decided after many
discussions to re-ban it. Four of five members of the council voted for the ban.

Life from the Loam

This card was for a long time on the watch list. We´ve decided to delete it from the list just to
put it on again. We don’t ban it because of the power level but for the following reasons:

• LftL is dominating most of the control mirrors. Only if a player can “answer” an LftL
with some graveyard hate or hand disruption the match is going to focus on other
cards. The resource advantage which LftL is generating is way too much. A game can
simply end on turn 3 if a player can resolve a turn 2 Intuition which is finding
Wasteland, LftL and a cycle land. Dredging the LftL and wasting the nonbasic land of
an opponent on turn 3 is a very frustrating play. This monotone cycle is not healthy for
the format so we want to change that.
• Life from the Loam is destroying two Archetypes: Land Destruction and Discard
which are for the most part are not represented in the format because of this card.
• LftL is making Gifts Ungiven and Intuition way too powerful. We want to keep these
cards in the format. With the banning of LftL players need in the future more skill to
get the full value out of the cards. Some decks will not even play Intuition anymore
because the huge advantage LftL was generating is gone. Of course this will consume
more time to find the correct piles but we think it’s important that the cards can fulfill
their roles; to find answers or threats.
• We have a lot of powerful lands in the format: Bazaar of Baghdad, Volrath's
Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Karakas, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale,
Wasteland, Mishra's Workshop. LftL find these cards way to easy. With the banning
of LoA we took one very powerful land out of the format and with other cards like
Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary or Sylvan Scrying players can still find the
good lands. But Gifts Ungiven and Intuition find these lands en passant together with
Life from the Loam!

In summary we think without these two cards the format will be a lot more diversified and is still
very interesting for players. Finally since both cards weren’t necessary for the control vs.
aggro matchup we don’t weaken control with these decisions.

Protean Hulk

Not too much to say but we´ve decided to unban the Hulk since most cards which provide an
early, constant and safe abuse are banned (Flash, Entomb, Buried Alive, Survival of the
Fittest). Some finish players tried to abuse the Hulk but weren´t able to do so. We thought
also about an unbanning of Wordlgorger Dragon but decided not to because it offers some
random turn 2 or turn 3 kills. Additionally it doesn’t need 4-5 combo pieces and is easy to
implement into reanimator decks.

Thanks go to Tabris for translating these reasons into English.