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Started by LasH, 10-04-2011, 01:47:37 PM

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coldcrow

#75
This is pure theorycraft and has no basis at all. While UG is a solid deck, it is not really the best deck to abuse loam at all. It lost gifts and your example of t2 intuition has a 1/10 chance. Not to mention you'd lose loam to any gravehate after that. Not to mention so many good creatures have been printed that pure loam-control strategies are way too slow and vulnerable.
And when was retrace a powerful deck?

By the same logic you could ban Knight-otR because it has a powerful synergy with the best lands.
Also the good oath deck played loam itself, because of the powerful synergy.

unbans: Ywill, Gifts, Library, LED, Loam, Balance, Enlightened, (Mystical), (Academy).
ban: nothing

To check out if there really is a dominating combodeck. I mean Academy/Yawg/LED was banned because Stax and TPS made a few top 8 appearances, like Dortmund 10/1/06 3/8. Now please check the recent Top8s in Germany. 3c-5c Goodstuff/aggro decks are dominating and consist of roughly 3/4 of the same cards.
I'd actually be very happy to see a loam deck locking out nonbasics from turn 3 on, which is a bad assumption because you should always run a few basics and also pay a price for your many colours.

I'd really want to see a massive unban to CHECK what is good in our format now and whatnot, you cannot assume that tps/stax/whatever rules like it did when he have now so many good creatures and tools for the aggro/control decks.

For example TPS: They play pridemage, they play waste, they play stifle, some play cheap counters, they play avalanche riders and clique and glen-elendra, and ooze and on and have multiple tutors for each of them. Yes TPS could steal a game on turn 1 with the ultra lucky hand of: Academy, LED, petal, mox, land, Draw 7 or so. But please consider the chances of that hand.
And academy might be too strong, there is no doubt, but unless we have a large collection of actual data there is no way of telling.

Instead of banning, enable other decks instead.

PS: It is not Birthing Pod which makes the Goodstuff decks dominate the meta, the culprits are the good creatures. Do you want to ban them all?
I think the real question is what kind of meta does the council or we want? Do we want a rather uniform meta where 3c-5c decks are the best decks followed by the ubiquitous RDW and maybe one UW? Or would a meta with more distinctive decks be better?

Nastaboi

Library, Balance and Academy have too swingy efects to allow in any format. I do agree with "rather unban some stuff" approach while I also think that banning some cards too would be the right thing to do.
Quote0:13:51 [Nastaboi] Nastaboi plays Invincible Hymn from Hand
0:14:25 [Nastaboi] Nastaboi's life total is now 221 (+213)

ChristophO


@coldcrow:
I do not understand your post at all. Did you even read Tabris post on the german forum? One of his arguments for an unban of Life from the Loam is that it would allow Retrace cards; Seismic Assault etc. into the format and create diversity. I disagree: LftL will retake it's spot in U/G Aggrocontrol and their should also be ways to abuse it with Oath of Druids to find it alongside with some powerful creature like you said. Acusing me of theorycrafting is pointless as well. We are discussing a theoretical unban of a card. Everything voiced here are just opinions; that is why the online league will allow the unbanwatchlist cards so that we can gather experience with the cards on the unbanlist. The most important thing to understand is that perception is king regarding a banlist. It does not matter at all if the right cards are banned and unproblematic cards meta-wise are allowed. If the public opinion reaches a point where they strongly dislike a deck or a keycard and stop showing up for play the format is hurting and a change to the ban list might be beneficial to the format. Obviously the Highlander format seems to be growing again right now. For me that is strong indication that the council is doing a splendid job managing the format. Reintroducing a powerful combo deck might piss off a lot of players nevermind the real strength of the deck. I personally dislike powerful early game ending combos (card interactions that are even too powerful for legacy). I understand those decks are not consistent enough to regularly achieve great placements on the Grand Highlander Prix; I still really dislike seeing a turn 2 Hermit Druid. I also really dislike T1 Trinisphere + Workshop especially being on the draw. I understand that different people have different perspectives. Yet I still do not see the gain of the Trinisphere unban. It just reintroduced a really annoying (but unlikely ofc) opening that people did not like before the banning of Trinisphere as well.

Regarding Birthing pod:
Decks who play birthing pod win by sucessfully resolving it. Tabris has counted 67 resolutions of that spell leading to 60 gam wins. This statistic covers my own experience with the card. The only games I lost resolving the card happened when my opponent was able to stop the pod via Mindcensor in response to first activation and once by copying it with metamorph and using it to find a mindcensor. It is not that the creatures are overpowered; it is casting and finding them for 1 mana and 2 life one a turn that is unfair. This is like saying Tinker is not busted it is all BLightsteel Colossus fault...


My personal opinion regarding banned card management:
Unban:
LED, Yawgmoth'S Will ( I strongly doubt we will be able to break those cards without Balance and Gifts Ungiven)
Cards I would like to test in online league which are on the banlist:
Tolarian Academy in a draw 7 Tolarian academy centered combo list and in Staxx
Life from the loam to diminish my fear regarding the card
Ban:
Birthing Pod
If testing prooves my opinion swap Workshop with Academy.

   

Payron

I am always open minded for bannings and unbannings, but I am a bit worried about lftl. Some of you talk about the variation of Decks because it could able to play some sort of synergie decks, but when I look back to the meta with lftl then I remember that there was nearly no control deck without green just because of lftl. I can t tell you if it would realy happen again, but I don t think that lftl would help the "lets get more control decks out there" problem.

@pod: I belive also it is way to strong!! I had realy a lot of fun with that card, but If I build up a new deck without green, I always think about if I should just splash green for pod or not!!

LasH

#79
Quote from: Payron on 24-01-2012, 03:00:54 PM
I am always open minded for bannings and unbannings, but I am a bit worried about lftl. Some of you talk about the variation of Decks because it could able to play some sort of synergie decks, but when I look back to the meta with lftl then I remember that there was nearly no control deck without green just because of lftl. I can t tell you if it would realy happen again, but I don t think that lftl would help the "lets get more control decks out there" problem.

This is exactly the point.

Alrdy said in german, lftl won't create ANY new deck. No seismic deck, no retrace deck, simply because it didnt when we had it unbanned even with gifts ungiven. The deck which will benefit from this unban is Goodstuff in my opinion, because it will just get a free and solid draw engine and we might loose any kind of landdestruction decks in the format (dont wanna repeat all my arguments from my german post ;).

Futhermore dont forget about the "time" aspect. We alrdy talk about sensei ban ONLY bc of time issues. Lftl is MUCH slower, combined with top frustrating to play against (just in terms of time).

If u wanna see changes to the meta, new/old decks rising, you need to unban drasticly like coldcrow said. The best time to do this would be now, because the gp just happend.

Kassow-Rossing

"Yet I still do not see the gain of the Trinisphere unban."
We are yet to see the loss of the Trinisphere unban as well. Nobody plays it because it's not a strong card. Weak cards should not be on the ban list. Yes there exists a semi-strong combination out there, but you should also be rewarded for playing two cards that do nothing on them own. Workshop is getting tougher and tougher to keep in the deck and should get further and further away from the HL Councils ban list.

So far Trinisphere has been proven right to be unbanned as the HL Council also agrees with:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=760.0
"Our decision to unban Trinisphere proved to be right. The card makes Staxx obviously stronger and is a nice anti-aggro card too but didn't push staxx to next level. Staxx is still tier 2 based on the results we gathered since Trinisphere was unleashed - you'll find only one(!) top HL decklist using Trinisphere (http://mtgpulse.com/events-highlander). For now, that was the reason why Trinisphere has been vanished from the watchlist."



Life from the Loam is only dangerous with cards like Intuition and Gifts Ungiven. Having Demonic Tutor fetching up a LftL or a Wasteland after you have the other is not worse of a problam than fetching up any other combo piece.

If you cannot enable recurring card draw og recurring Wasteland from t4, Life from the Loam should not be a problem => Unban it because the people have wished for this for two years in a row. Sensei is a slow card. Life from the Loam: Not so much. Also after turn 4 you should not cry about losing your non-basic lands recurring with Wasteland if your opponent had the luck to find a 2-card combo and if you only play non-basics.


Staxx is - by all means - still tier 2.0 so I see no reason to fear it. I play it sometimes and it's not too strong. Not at all in fact :)

Library should not get unbanned, but Yawgmoth's Will, Tolarian Academy, Enlightened Tutor (Ban Pod first) could.
Birthing Pod could get banned and Intuition should get banned. Also Gifts should not get unbanned at least for the next few years even though I would love it in all my decks.
I'm fine with Sensei in the format but I wouldn't mind it being banned even though I play it in all my decks.

SpoCk0nd0pe

I would like to see strip mine unbanned. The only way I see to break this atm is crucible but I do not think it'd be too bad. I think this format could use more LD and in the current meta it's not much stronger then wasteland.

Please don't ban Stoneforge, if he proves to be too strong ban batterskull. Stoneforge is one of the few good 2cc drops this format has.

If you really want to stop multicolor goodstuff aggro you probably have to reduce the library to 60 cards. Wizards is printing too many good aggro critters over the past few years, and so few good control cards (because magic players are whiny about control theese days). This would strengthen combo, control and nonbasic hate, I think it would add a lot of diversity to the meta.

Mythrandir

Quote from: SpoCk0nd0pe on 29-02-2012, 05:29:52 PM
Stoneforge is one of the few good 2cc drops this format has.


Seriously? One of the few?

Plenty of good 2 CMC drops.

Dreamer

Based on this evening's experiences: Fuck Black Vise. "1: Deal 10 damage to opponent, yay." That I could deal with I guess, but the thing also kills Planeswalkers and worst of all just makes bad hands brutally unfun to play. At least other kinds of bullshit cards like Natural Order need other things to combo with or are stuff like Ankh of Mishra that while ridiculously brutal can be at least controlled by your own play (and punish good hands moreso than bad ones so you have some room to play unoptimally). Black Vise just fucks over bad hands even worse and is just generally a ridiculous piece of shit.

[/salt]

Kristian

Quote from: Dreamer on 20-07-2012, 10:40:01 PM
Based on this evening's experiences: Fuck Black Vise. "1: Deal 10 damage to opponent, yay." That I could deal with I guess, but the thing also kills Planeswalkers and worst of all just makes bad hands brutally unfun to play. At least other kinds of bullshit cards like Natural Order need other things to combo with or are stuff like Ankh of Mishra that while ridiculously brutal can be at least controlled by your own play (and punish good hands moreso than bad ones so you have some room to play unoptimally). Black Vise just fucks over bad hands even worse and is just generally a ridiculous piece of shit.

[/salt]
I played Black Vise in mono red, it could be devastating in turn 1. Problem was that it often was a dead card to draw mid to late game where opponents mostly sits at 4-5 cards.
There can be only one!

Tiggupiru

Black Vise is largely fair. It's very matchup dependent and is usually pretty weak when you are on the draw. If they go land - birds - go, your vise is dealing most likely full one damage for the rest of the game. It's kinda like Mana Drain. MD has higher upside, but needs a specific set of sequence (you having time to cast it, they not playing around it and you having a good follow up play) to really shine. I see no reason to ban Mana Drain (love the card) and Vise, while not something I usually cast, is completely OK in my book. If Vise would be like "deal 8 damage" every time it's in the opener, then I could see it getting the axe.

Vazdru

#86
This questionnaire will be distributed to the participants of the HL Cup in Hanau next sunday (GP XIII). It's almost the same as the ones before.

Online players are invited to take part in this survey (just quote and fill in). The analysis will be reported here soon.

@ HIGHLANDER COMMUNITY

Name/Nick:_________________________________________________________________


Highlander banned-list

•   Ancestral Recall
•   Balance
•   Birthing Pod
•   Black Lotus
•   Chaos Orb
•   Entomb
•   Falling Star
•   Fastbond
•   Flash
•   Gift's Ungiven
•   Grindstone
•   Imperial Seal
•   Library of Alexandria
•   Mana Crypt
•   Mana Vault
•   Mind Twist   
•   Mox Emerald
•   Mox Jet
•   Mox Pearl
•   Mox Ruby
•   Mox Sapphire
•   Mystical Tutor
•   Natural Order new!
•   Shahrazad
•   Skullclamp
•   Sol Ring
•   Stoneforge Mystic
•   Strip Mine
•   Survival of the Fittest
•   Tolarian Academy
•   Time Vault
•   Time Walk
•   Tinker
•   Umezawa's Jitte
•   Vampiric Tutor   

•   Amulet of Quoz
•   Bronze Tablet
•   Contract from Below
•   Darkpact
•   Demonic Attorney
•   Jeweled Bird
•   Rebirth
•   Tempest Efreet
•   Timmerian Fiends



How do you rate the banned-list on a scale from 1 to 10 (1=poor, 10=great)?

__________


Which mulligan-rule do you prefer?


   Free Mulligan

   Spoils / Poker Mulligan

   Road to Paris



How do you rate the free mulligan on a scale from 1 to 10?

__________


How often do you play Highlander (mp.org-rules)


   several times weekly

   once per week

   once per month
   
   only tournaments



How often have you played on a HL-GP / -Cup?

___________




Which cards are missing on the banned-list and why? (max. the 5 most important ones)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________



Which cards should be deleted from the banned-list and why? (max. the 5 most important ones)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________



Thanks a lot for your participation!

Helpful suggestions are welcome!

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________
Far below the earth
Where the demons hunt the souls of those that sleep
In the city of the Vazdru and the Drin
Where the black flame burns inside the palace fountain.

so_not

Quote from: Vazdru on 27-12-2013, 08:48:02 PM
Highlander banned-list

•   Tolarian Academy


Might want to fix this.

Vazdru

Far below the earth
Where the demons hunt the souls of those that sleep
In the city of the Vazdru and the Drin
Where the black flame burns inside the palace fountain.

so_not

#89
Name/Nick: Aleksi Väänänen/so_not

How do you rate the banned-list on a scale from 1 to 10 (1=poor, 10=great)?
5

Which mulligan-rule do you prefer?
Free Mulligan

How do you rate the free mulligan on a scale from 1 to 10?
At the moment I thinks it's a perfect 10.

How often do you play Highlander (mp.org-rules)
several times weekly

Which cards are missing on the banned-list and why? (max. the 5 most important ones)
These 5 are the cards that create the most degenerate games. This means that whenever one of these cards is involved in the game, it totally controls the way the game is played out. Some of these are actually so stupid that they completely wipe out many otherwise playable archtypes. You really don't want to play any sort of midrange deck if your opponents are having Titans, Wurmcoils, Griselbargains, Marit Lages and Mindslavers during early turns or creating an army of thopter tokens each game.

Tolarian Academy - This card is way more powerful than any other card in the format. I guess the reason why Academy decks haven't rose as a dominant force yet is that not enough players are making the effort to build the best academy deck. Also decks in general are pretty powerful these days and have the necessary tools (disruption+fast clock) to compete academy decks. In our meta many players dedicate time in building academy decks of various styles and although they are still probably far from perfect, the games involving this card are totally random and it's just really stupid card. To its defence I must say that Academy mirrors are hilarious. See this event for example where things are heading: http://mtgpulse.com/event/15302#214530

Oath of Druids - This is perfect example for the aforementioned degenerateness. Yes you must commit your whole deck to it, but that doesn't change the fact that it makes games very random. For the aggro players it's a very frustrating card to play against and probably should change the meta a lot more than it currently is. See this list for example: http://mtgpulse.com/event/14411#204248

Wasteland - The card that causes the most random wins in the whole format and also an auto include in EVERY deck. There are also no good arguments for this card to be legal. If you need a land that destroys non basic lands, you can definitely use Tectonic Edge or Dust Bowl but that really really is not what this card is used most of the time. Mostly it's just a random screw card and the ultimate random screw card it is.

True-Name Nemesis - Oh well, this have just been introduced to the format but it's yet another reason why you should stay away from creatures and just do unfair things.

Sensei's Divining Top - Yes better player probably gets a bigger advantage with this but it's not very hard to top, fetch, top, draw, top etc. over and over again. It just makes playing less interesting and more frustrating.