Community Poll - Sensei's Divining Top

[Vazdru]

Rules for this thread (plz read!)

* everyone in the community is allowed to post once in this thread (i want no discussions, your second post will deleted without any further warning)
* plz let me know if you want have Sensei's Diving Top in our format or not - (for me it's personally some kind of community choice so i want to have as many feedbacks as possible of the community till the next bannig deadline in october)
* i don't wanna have "either or" or unclear votings, if you don't feel safe in your decision, plz don't post
* your vote should look like

BAN (or UNBAN)

explanation (voluntary)


___________________________________
notes:
* this is no official vote for ban/unban Sensei's Diving Top - it will only influence my vote in the HLL Council in october
* this is no official thread of the HLL council, just my personal interest

part of Banned List Changes Season III - 2011

Sensei's Divining Top

Sensei's Divining Top stays on the watch list, and mainly because of the two reasons which haven't changed from the last time: Being an auto include in almost every deck, the card makes this format more like of 99 than 100 cards. Secondly, the artifact makes drawn out games while giving significant advantage to the player who has it first active. There aren't enough good tools that punishes directly from playing the card (à la Burning-Tree Shaman), so we are a little bit at crossroads here. While we strive to keep the banned list as short as possible, we must ask whether the format would be more enjoyable without the card, and for this we'd need more community input from the next 3 months. So keep posting those deck lists and tournament results.
On the other hand, the ban of Sensei's Divining Top does not fall clearly into any of the five banning reasons being an unprecedented exception to the established policy, and we don't know what waits at the end of that road. Also, the card is skill rewarding with many options it offers when activated. Lastly, we don't have enough information how the card is perceived by a larger community and the current assumption is, that the card isn't necessarily that big of a problem.

[W0lf]

BAN

also BAN Gifts

[Thibir]

Unban.

[Tiggupiru]

BAN.

The powerlevel is not the reason to ban it, I don't think. But the time issues it causes are really annoying and quite problematic in tournaments. We joked about taking a stopwatch and calculating the time every time someone picks up their top3. Turns out that is not all as they also have to think if they need to use it on their upkeep and things like that, so it actually goes beyond that. Also, I see no reason not play it every deck. I mean, it always cycles. I've heard people in my local store saying that they do not plan to make a HL deck until Top gets banned.

[Maqi]

UNBAN.

I feel that the time spent "divining" is still bearable.
Also, it's not an autoinclude. 5C Aggro, Boros etc. don't want this.

Keep the banned list short and clean. That's my opinion.

[Mythrandir]

Unban!

It isn't powerful enough to see ban hammer. there are alot of other cards that have time issues and there are other cards that are auto-includes (fetches) independently of your deck.
Aggro decks can't really abuse this (at least early on..), so even though this goes or can go in all decks this is mostly a problem in mid-games. A fast player can easily pay 1 eot and see top 3 and choose fast. The biggest problem is still shuffling not paying the 1 and choosing your top.
With this said, well me just clarify i'm not pro-banning fetches. Just saying that top, although decisive in a lot of games, specially midgames isn't powerful or disruptive enough to see a ban.

You can still play needle in everydeck to stop this. You can counters, you can krosan grip it.

just my 2 cents

[Topas]

Unban.


I like the skill rewarding cards.

[Tabris]

UNBAN!

I assure you it would be a huge mistake to ban such a powerful tool for control in these days.

[MMD]

UNBAN

I neither think that it is too powerful nor that it takes too much time during the game to use it. If time is a factor to ban it, than we should also think about banning other cards as well.

[crazy_malamute]

UNBAN

Top is not a overpowered card.

[peeler]

UNBAN

I want the shortest ban-list as possible, and top shouldn´t be on it.

[ChristophO]

UNBAN

There will always be staple cards played in most decks. The card only consumes (too) much time because people abuse it to deliberately stall or slow play - in both cases the other player can either call a judge or make himself a nuisance to quicken game pace. Searching and shuffling your deck takes a lot of time even when trying to hurry. I also believe that because Highlander is a favorite kitchen table format people tend to fall into that play mood (slow, taking time and chatting etc.).

[so_not]

BAN

I also want shortest possible ban list and still think Top should be banned. I don't know what skill factors people are talking about here. Good players operate faster with Top but even then it takes lots of time and the card is just too good in control mirrors (+it's not very fun either). Burn is pretty much the only deck (I still don't count WW as a deck) at the moment that don't play this so banning it would give additional deck building options. The only other ban worthy card involving a huge time factor (on top of being brutally overpowered) is Gifts Ungiven and that should have been banned years ago.

[Karhumies]

BAN

Whoever gets the top first has a tremendous advantage, and pretty much everybody is playing it and tutoring for it.

[Kristian]

Unban.

It doesn't feel too powerful. It's not that played in my meta. I've also not experienced the top taking alot of time in action over the years I've been playing and I feel that it has been greatly exaggerated.