Input required - Banning of the Fetchlands

[Tiggupiru]

First of all, I DO NOT campaign for the banning of these cards. I aim only to find opinions and input. I think discussing these things is really good as it also gives council some idea what the people want the format to be. These cards are what defines the format, so discussing about them is something that I think should happen eventually.

The cards in question are the five Onslaught fetchlands (Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, Wooded Foothills, Bloodstained Mire, Windswept Heath), and the five Zendikar fetchlands (Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest, Marsh Flats, Arid Mesa, Verdant Catacombs).

Without further ado, a simple pros/cons -list to kick things off:

Pros:

+ Building the manabase of any HL deck becomes more skill intensive. Right now, it might not need any thought.
+ Makes splashing for the best cards harder, the weaknesses and strengths of the colors matter more. Also, splashing a color in monocolored decks is no longer automatically correct.
+ Tournament times will shorten, ~5 shuffles less each game means a significant drop in round times.
+ The early game is not a one big shuffle for the first few turns. It gets tedious after few games, affects especially testing and casual matches.
+ Can affect the banning of SDT and Life from the Loam.
+ Increases variance and card pool.

Cons:

- Makes some decks unplayable (mostly 5 colored decks).
- The banned list, IMO at least, should be as short as possible. Adding 10 cards that clearly aren't "broken", is not very optimal for that goal.
- Fetching is somewhat skill dependent (either go for all-duals, rather than play around Blood Moon, or other way around).


I especially want to know what the council thinks about this.

[Mythrandir]

Well, IMO not a very good idea.
Besides the shuffling/time problem i really don't see any problem with these.


Also, i believe this would have no effect on LFTL whatsoever. LFTL "problems" would still appear without them, since you still have cyclers and more important wasteland.

[Helle]

When looking at the top8 of the HL grand prix I don't think that everything is ok right now. There is no real control deck among them (I know this discussion is going on on anther thread) and there is a 5c aggrodeck winning the tournament. Banning  fetchlands would definitly solve this problem, but I don't think thats the way to go, as they aren't dominant cards and there is no abuse.

[Dreamer]

I think the fetch-dual manabase is a design problem in one very significant way. Think about how manabases scale with money invested:

Basics: Durable, fast, poor multicolor support.
Taplands: Fragile, slow, excellent multicolor support.
Non-typed duals: Fragile, fast, good multicolor support.
Fetchlands + basics: Durable, fast, mediocre multicolor support.
Fetchlands + duals with basic backup: Durable, fast, insane multicolor support.

Durability in this case refers to the manabase's ability to stand against hate. The dual-fetchland manabase is absolutely atrocious in this regard, especially because alpha-beta duals don't need to be cracked at EoT (terramorphic-style) like Ravnica shocklands to avoid pain. Now you can wait, wait, wait, oh, he played Moon, crack fetches for basics, nice Moon you got there. Essentially, there's no deckbuilding choices to be made, just money to be thrown at the problem.

Plus, of course, there's the matter of 5c aggro and "just because I can" splashes. Neither fetches or typed duals are necessarily terribly problematic by themselves. But together, they produce a manabase that is all upside, no downside, and make possible quite painless, durable and fast 3-colour manabases, without 4/5-colour ones suffering much either. They're more fragile due to having to fetch a few more duals, but they're still very fast with stupidly good multicolor support. The only manabase crazier than that was the Vivid-Pool one from Lorwyn-era Standard, but it at least was slow as hell. This isn't.

In short, there's no choice, only more and more money (to the point of madness) if you can afford it. Yeah, it's radical. But not really a bad idea, either.

[Helle]

I don't like the way it is right now. Playing some two-colored decks I sometimes think the manabase would be more stable when adding another color and having access to more duals and fetches (even though this is less often the case now than it was before the Zen-fetches).

Before banning fetchlands, I'd think about an errata for the duals that removes the basic land types, so they cannot be fetched any longer. This way the banned list stays as short as possible and multicolored decks have to rethink their manabases. Minor splashes with just adding some duals and fetching them when needed aren't possible any longer (like in Nastaboi's UWr Planeswalker Control where he splashed red for 3,5 cards and a Tropical Island for 2x 0,5 cards).

Do you thinkt that would be sufficient?

[Kristian]

I'm against banning fetchlands, mostly due to the cons listed in the original post. Also, I haven't experienced shuffling to be much of a problem, even when playing 11 fetch lands (Krosan Verge is awesome), it's a matter of routine.

[Mythrandir]

I don't like the way it is right now. Playing some two-colored decks I sometimes think the manabase would be more stable when adding another color and having access to more duals and fetches (even though this is less often the case now than it was before the Zen-fetches).

Before banning fetchlands, I'd think about an errata for the duals that removes the basic land types, so they cannot be fetched any longer. This way the banned list stays as short as possible and multicolored decks have to rethink their manabases. Minor splashes with just adding some duals and fetching them when needed aren't possible any longer (like in Nastaboi's UWr Planeswalker Control where he splashed red for 3,5 cards and a Tropical Island for 2x 0,5 cards).

Do you thinkt that would be sufficient?

"Errating" cards should be WOTC competence, not ours. It would generate loads of confusion.

Aggro is dominating it will probably be dominant for the time being, because of it's redudancy and WOTC love for fast/efficient creatures.

[Maqi]

The statement that you could just "mindlessly" splash colors or as Dreamer said that you splash "just because you can" must be critically adressed.

Let's tackle the first expression: "mindless". That is just not true. I've been playing multicolored decks for a while now, recently mostly aggro variants.
Especially in aggressive decks you cannot just splash every good creature from each color. Five or four color manabases must be built with a main color in mind. This main color is accompanied by a secondary one. Every other color will just be a splash. When you look at goblinpiledriver's or my list from the gp t8 you'll notice the following approximate structure:

primary color: green
secondary color: white
tertiary colors: red, black (and blue)

Why this structure? Well, green essentially does three things for you. It accelerates you, it fixes your mana, it offers efficient beaters. Because of that it makes for a good primary color in aggrodecks.
White brings you more efficient beaters, mostly golden ones (Knight of the Reliquary, Watchwolf, Qasali Pridemage etc.) and good removal (StP, Oblivion Ring). Furthermore it enables good golden creatures with your tertiary colors (Bant splash: GW+U, Naya splash: GW+R).
Black offers great removal (Vindicate, Maelstrom Pulse). Red grants you access to burn.

In general that's the rough structure of recent highlander Zoo decks. There are some paramount deckbuilding rules to be followed here:

1. Do not play non-green, non-white cards that cost double colored mana. (The reason for this is, that you want early access to green because of your accelerants, which also provide green mana. So double green comes naturally to you. Double white cards should only be included in the 3 or 4 cc slot, since double white will come more often but usually not as early as turn 2)

2. Most of your lands should be able to produce green mana. (This is where fetchlands really shine. They provide you with early green while simultaneously granting you access to your secondary and tertiary colors)

3. Along with 2. goes this one: The number of colorless mana producing utility lands is very limited. Almost always you should only run Wasteland and nothing else. The more controllish your build is (vs aggroish) the more lands of this variety can be accommodated.

With the above in mind it is safe to say that playing multiple colors is not "mindless" and you have to put quite some thought into it.

Now we can also explain, why you "cannot just splash". Splashing wildly just isn't possible, as seen above. Your manabase won't be able to handle double UUs or BBs along with GGs and WWs. This is not a "Vivid land" manabase, where you can just put Wrath of God and Cruel Ultimatum in the same deck. Therefore you don't see any Jaces or Spectral Processions in the lists, although those cards' abilities are probably exactly what these decks want. Splashing does come at a cost: You are cut off from using good utility lands, you are susceptible to non-basic hate and you will lose to mulligans and manascrew more often.

4c/5c Aggro constitutes a genuine archetype in its own right, with its own rules, strengths and weaknesses. You will lose games to Blood Moon, Back to Basics, Price of Progress and the like where other archetypes won't. And your most common and potent enemy will be Wasteland.

One thing to note is the following: Highlander, unlike other formats, is not as defined by the rock, paper, scissors scenario as other formats are. Every deck is quite capable of beating every other deck. Surely, there are matchup percentages and one deck may fare better against some than against others. However, people like their deck being capable of many things. People like toolboxing, they like cool interactions and therefore will often opt to play many colors. Do not disallow that.

I can only advocate not to take any steps in the direction of banning fetchlands. As reflected by the last GP's top 8, there is variance. You could argue whether it's dominated by aggro strategies. But there surely isn't a "multicolored" dominance. There are only two 4-colored decks and one 5-colored deck while there are three 2-colored ones and two mono colored decks.

I feel that losing the multicolored archetype will make the highlander format a lot more stale than it is right now. And that would be a sad thing.

[Tabris]

+1 again

[Tiggupiru]

Few points I like to make here:

First of all, not a good idea that format specific errata. I much rather have a different solution than straight up banning anything, but introducing errata is something that is really confusing and kinda clumsy way to deal with this.

Secondly, Magi had some good points, but this is not comparable to Vivid-pool 5C madness in any way. Vivids were slow and only viable in a metagame where nonbasic hate is minimum. The Fetch-Dual manabase is faster and capable of beating nonbasic hate, especially in a format where there is no sideboard (and no, I do NOT want sideboards). In HL, good hate-cards are something you must tutor for, or they don't hit in time to make a difference. They also take away slots in the main deck that are basically dead cards against certain decks and dead in some point of the game, no matter the match-up. This situation is nothing like the one standard had. So, no Cloudtreshers, Cryptic Commands and Cruel Ultimatums in the same deck here, but standard didn't have a first turn one white-drop, second turn blue-green drop and Doran on the third turn.

Thirdly, I forgot to mention in the original post, that two-colored decks also get to splash one or two colors for free. The fact that you need to have a primary and a secondary color is a very good point, but where in other formats that is sometimes the point where you need to stop, or straight-up lose to your lands. In HL, two-colored decks have a limited amount of mana fixing, so they might anyway want to play nine fetchlands, as opposed to the seven they have "naturally", and put in couple of duals to fetch with these lands. This not only gives more access to either of the two main colors, but also enables light splash (maybe Gifts Ungiven or Demonic) essentially for free. I really don't think playing strictly two-colors is optimal for most decks, as good fixing is hard to come by, and you most likely want to play those two duals anyway, all the while getting access to one or two really good cards for no real cost.

On the other hand, the banning of these cards is quite problematic on it's own. Right now, I feel I would much rather have some other solution, as I really feel the current situation is not optimal, but on the same time bannings are always an extreme measure, and not to be used lightly. I mean, I am still not on a campaign here, nor I never expected nothing but heavy resistance, but I am very curious about what people think the landbase should be.

[Vazdru]

It's an interesting idea to ban all ZEN/ONL fetchlands but i personally don't like it.

Imo Maqi highlighted some good points and the mentioned Cons overtop the Pros. 

[Nastaboi]

I don't like that fetchlands make splashing too easy and decks too similar, but right now I can see no solution to the problem.

[Topas]

LOL, I thought that Fools' day was on April, 1st. I really couldn't resist to post my opinion on such idea and I definitely don't like it.

@ the thoughts on Durable, fast, insane multicolor support provided by mindless fetchlands+duals combination - this is just a hype and absolutely wrong. Just try to put a viable five-color something together and you'll see on yourself. Yes, it is fast, has no drawbacks and supports multicolor. But it is hardly durable - there is lots of nonbasic hate out there and what is even worse, lots of that hate has a good body with it, so it is always useful - this is actually one of the reasons why aggro decks are doing so well. With Wizards coming with better and better critters each time, the aggro decks have more and more creatures with disruptive abilities and a good body in one package. So in result, they can disrupt the opponent's board situation while keeping pressure on him at the same time. Furthermore, when you play a 4+ color deck with a lot of cards with double-color casting costs, it really depends on each choice of what dual you will fetch - the skill factor is high at those moments. And it happens often, that one destroyed land can make the game lost. Not even speaking about the fact, that fetchlands and duals alone don't provide the guarantee of not getting color-screwed in multicolor decks. Last but not least, building and optimizing a good multicolor manabase is definitely not a simple thing. I've been developing (started from a budget manabase) and playing my 5c staxx deck for years now, I know what I am talking about - in decks like that one, every single land choice in the build counts, and this is also true for playing it.


@ time consumption due to lots of shuffling after fetching - would you feel comfortable with amount of shuffling effects after banning the fetchlands? What about the tutors? Would they be next? And what about all other abilities requiring shuffling? Would you ban/errata those as well? Where would this lead, then? I can only see this leading to a smaller variety of viable decks and deck archetypes. As a second thought on this topic - my personal experience is, that it's the players themselves who make the main difference. It is really possible to fetch/tutor and shuffle the deck quickly. However, if you meet a retard, the fetches won't make a difference - he will be playing even a monocolored dumb-aggro slowly. So speaking from my experience, it is only about the skill and good knowledge of that pile of cards you brought with you to play with.

@ the whining about cost of some of the cards - this will probably sound arrogant, but here's the fact: magic is not a cheap hobby. Get used to it. Just look at the other formats - how much do their tier 1 and 2 decks cost? With HL staples like duals, you can be at least sure that the price of the card won't drop in a year, after format rotates. On a sidenote, there is always a possibility to build a viable 1- or 2- color deck in HL and make it to T8 (or even win the tournament) with it. So with fetchlands and duals in HL, there is really no "must have it to win" situation - so please kindly don't take the variety of choice from the players on the account of your personal reasons.


All in all, I don't want to see my favourite game being turned from complex and skill-intensive one to some dumbass McGame just because soemone is unable to think quick, shuffle his own deck quick or is whining because of lack of money. The Wizards are doing this job with their unbalanced and strong support of creature-based strategies for a fair amount of time, already - I'm not complaining on that and not calling for restrictions in aggro builds, I just take it as it is and adapt to it. And I expect that on the other hand, the fetchlands and duals I'm playing will get some respect, too.

[pyyhttu]

I don't like that fetchlands make splashing too easy and decks too similar, but right now I can see no solution to the problem.

I don't know either how to make splashing more difficult. It's basically the same thing in Legacy.
Splashing a second color became considerable more easier after the second cycle of fetchlands were introduced along Zendikar. So maybe they just have to be accepted as part of the game, and the players themselves should take the iniative to rectify this by playing more reactive LD when possible (Shadow of Doubt, Aven Mindcensor, Bind...).

[Mythrandir]

LOL, I thought that Fools' day was on April, 1st. I really couldn't resist to post my opinion on such idea and I definitely don't like it.

@ the thoughts on Durable, fast, insane multicolor support provided by mindless fetchlands+duals combination - this is just a hype and absolutely wrong. Just try to put a viable five-color something together and you'll see on yourself. Yes, it is fast, has no drawbacks and supports multicolor. But it is hardly durable - there is lots of nonbasic hate out there and what is even worse, lots of that hate has a good body with it, so it is always useful - this is actually one of the reasons why aggro decks are doing so well. With Wizards coming with better and better critters each time, the aggro decks have more and more creatures with disruptive abilities and a good body in one package. So in result, they can disrupt the opponent's board situation while keeping pressure on him at the same time. Furthermore, when you play a 4+ color deck with a lot of cards with double-color casting costs, it really depends on each choice of what dual you will fetch - the skill factor is high at those moments. And it happens often, that one destroyed land can make the game lost. Not even speaking about the fact, that fetchlands and duals alone don't provide the guarantee of not getting color-screwed in multicolor decks. Last but not least, building and optimizing a good multicolor manabase is definitely not a simple thing. I've been developing (started from a budget manabase) and playing my 5c staxx deck for years now, I know what I am talking about - in decks like that one, every single land choice in the build counts, and this is also true for playing it.


@ time consumption due to lots of shuffling after fetching - would you feel comfortable with amount of shuffling effects after banning the fetchlands? What about the tutors? Would they be next? And what about all other abilities requiring shuffling? Would you ban/errata those as well? Where would this lead, then? I can only see this leading to a smaller variety of viable decks and deck archetypes. As a second thought on this topic - my personal experience is, that it's the players themselves who make the main difference. It is really possible to fetch/tutor and shuffle the deck quickly. However, if you meet a retard, the fetches won't make a difference - he will be playing even a monocolored dumb-aggro slowly. So speaking from my experience, it is only about the skill and good knowledge of that pile of cards you brought with you to play with.

@ the whining about cost of some of the cards - this will probably sound arrogant, but here's the fact: magic is not a cheap hobby. Get used to it. Just look at the other formats - how much do their tier 1 and 2 decks cost? With HL staples like duals, you can be at least sure that the price of the card won't drop in a year, after format rotates. On a sidenote, there is always a possibility to build a viable 1- or 2- color deck in HL and make it to T8 (or even win the tournament) with it. So with fetchlands and duals in HL, there is really no "must have it to win" situation - so please kindly don't take the variety of choice from the players on the account of your personal reasons.


All in all, I don't want to see my favourite game being turned from complex and skill-intensive one to some dumbass McGame just because soemone is unable to think quick, shuffle his own deck quick or is whining because of lack of money. The Wizards are doing this job with their unbalanced and strong support of creature-based strategies for a fair amount of time, already - I'm not complaining on that and not calling for restrictions in aggro builds, I just take it as it is and adapt to it. And I expect that on the other hand, the fetchlands and duals I'm playing will get some respect, too.

Well, this was a bit of a rant, no?


Time consumption is a real issue in competitive play. Searching for 1 specific card in piles of over 90 takes time, it takes time to shuffle well, a deck. Plus your opponent probably wants to cut it. So in a match, there can be up to 20 fetches, if you then add tutors and TOP time is indeed an issue, not to be taken lightly. Not that i'm saying we should ban these or errata duals...

Like pyyhttu said, things like aven, bind and stifle (which is seeing more and more game) are probably going to have to be played more.