Community Poll - Sensei's Divining Top

[kozel]

BAN std.

1) The unfun factor. I've many times mulled away top from my starting hand (in casual games, never in tournament) as it is way too tidious to play with if you only want to experience a fun game of magic. Also, when playing against a slower player with top - good god I don't like being a dick but sometimes I just feel like punching people who first top, thne 1min later top again as it is too hard to remember the cards. When I pass the turn to someone with a top and say 2 fetchlands on the table I could easily go and draft or something..

2) The round time cannot support a control mirror where both an active top. That will be the only game (hopefully) finished in that match. Wotc came to this same conclusion, and that is not irrelevant.

3) Being skill intensive is not a reason worth keeping a card around, as we have seen from banning of f.e. survival of the fittest.

4) The only reasonable way to punish people from running top is playing decks that use their mana exceptionally well, creating an effect similar to why merfolk in legacy has a good matchup against other blue decks - they optimize their mana better. However, most people don't seem to find playing zoo or monored goblins all that enjoyable. And even in those matchups top pulls it's weight perfectly well -> HL as a format cannot punish you from running std, and I have not yet come across a deck I'd feel like would not want to run sdt. It truly is 99 card format. (f.e I feel like burn should use top to find the lethal burn spells, and WW to find it's bomby armageddons. The 2 examples I get most often for decks that should not run top)

5) the best reason I have for keeping top unbanned, is to make trinket mage better - thus making it easier to find GY hate that unfortunately is not worth running anymore - this would tune down gifts a little bit, a card I would be saddened to see finding it's way to the banned list. I know I'm arguing agaisnt myself on this one but I just felt like brining this up.

6) this obviously does not prove anything, but I am very much anti-ban person. I dont think gifts should be banned. I was sad to see sruvival go. IMO led should be unbanned. Im not sure all the tutors need to be banned that are atm. I wouldnt mind DR unbanned. Yawgmoths win I welcome wholeheartedly but I have been speaking for the banning of SDT for like a year or something. Ages it feels like. And it is one of my favorite cards in the game. Still, I cannot wait untill I get to take it out of my deck.

[tonytahiti]

BAN


i feel if a card is good in every deck and additionally is colorless so it can be played in every deck, then highlander kind of turns into a 99 card format. STD + 99 cards. its the same with wasteland, but unlike std wasteland is actually good for the game i think, plus you tap it, destroy something and then its gone! if std sticks, it sticks and annoys you till end of the game.

1. makes games stale and slow paced
2. doesnt add much to the game, if control needs cards selection, there is lots available
3. turns highlander into a std + 99 card format
4. can not be easily removed, while being really powerful

BAN

[Nastaboi]

BAN

Time consuming equals unfun and I think that is strong enough criterion for banning.

[obojetnik]

BAN or UNBAN that's a question...

BAN!
nuff said... well maybe not, so:
lets summarize proBAN comments: annoying, unfun, timeconsuming, easily tutorable, colorless, hard to remove, autoinclude, SDT+fetches creates too much advantage/insight against a SDT-less opponent
UNBAN comments: short banlist, not autoinclude, skill rewarding, not that powerful, time issues exaggerated

Most BAN comments make sense and I agree with them although I do love playing with SDT myself. Control decks will surely miss it but on the other hand - control match with Top on both sides is a something I will never miss .

[carte_blanche]

Unban

I see no good reason to ban SDT - time consumption is not an argument against SDT in my opinion. If we start to ban cards because they make games last long, where is the limitation to this ban-worthy "time-stretching" ability? The next step would be to ban elements of staxx decks, because they can wreck your whole game plan (Boo,unfun!) and do not win straight away, or heavy control elements - those cards can also stretch a game nearly to infinity without a chance for the opposing player to break out of this "cage".
Bannings because of time issues could end in: "Just ban all good control cards!" - That is not the way to go in my opinion. That was exaggerated, but I think you got my point.

It's a bomb in control mirrors. Yes. There will be always cards that will win a game - given the right circumstances. And this card does not win the game straight away. It needs some time to create impact on the game. So you got some time left to win, before your opponent wins out of the card quality SDT creates for him/her. SDT does not win the game for you, you still have to work for it. That leads me to...

Skill: I feel better to loose a game because my opponent's skill, than loosing against a dumb 4/5 for two mana or because of manascrew. Also: oversimplified, but again - I think you know, what I mean.

@Autoinclude: I do not think so. In aggro decks this card is much too slow. SDT provides card quality on the long term, it does not create pressure - not the thing those decks want to play.

@Slow-play, oblivious opponents: There are ways to repay in kind, if you find it appropriate in a fun format like highlander: extreme fast play to make your opponent nervous, trash talk, staring at him/her or (plain simple): beg them to play a little faster.


Off topic: @Highlander-council: good idea to directly ask the community. You're doing a great job.

[Tabris]

+1

[Vazdru]

if i counted correctly the community vote is currently

Ban   11
Unban 21

[coldcrow]

UNBAN.

Unfun should never be an issue in my opinion, let's not turn the banlist into a "gentlemen's agreement".
Sdt is very powerful in control/3c-5c aggrocontrol because HL runs so many shuffle effects. But at the same time it provides control with a chance to find its answers vs aggro. I think the true problem -again- are the aggro/control decks which can abuse top the best with their bazillion fetches and tutors while simultaneously running a fast clock.
There are always cards which "break" mirrors in a singleton format, starting to ban them all would be stupid. For example an 1st turn runemommy is nothing I'd like to see in an aggro mirror, or *cough* mystic.

[Doks]

UNBAN


Most important reasons and arguments have been stated already.


/Edit: will there be polls regarding the other questionable choices to ban (Demonic Tutor, Gifts Univen, Mana Drain, etc.), too?

[pyyhttu]

will there be polls regarding the other questionable choices to ban (Demonic Tutor, Gifts Univen, Mana Drain, etc.), too?

From Vazdru's initial post:

* this is no official thread of the HLL council, just my personal interest

So no, polls in a thread are not a part of standard processes we've used so far, or plan to use. But we like to experiment.

[eliitti]

UNBAN

* Skill rewarding +++
* Makes the format more enjoyable because it is a fun, but not overpowered, card to play
* Not an absolute auto-include I think, and even if it was I still wouldn't punish it since the decks that best use it don't need punishing

[Vazdru]

i try to relaunch this poll  

like you can easily see Sensei's is on ban-watchlist again so your input could tip the scales for our votes in april

http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=982.msg9729#new


 

[carte_blanche]

Then I'll throw the first stone. 

• no ban
  
  Reason(s): One of the reasons I often hear when it comes to complaining about Sensei's Divining Top are time issues. To be honest, I cannot see this point. If that would really be an issue, Top would have been banned in Legacy long ago... but I never read any complaints in Legacy forums about that. (Though, I have to admit, I'm not a Legacy player. Maybe they just don't write about it because of superstitions ). There are decks in Legacy that want to utilize the top every game (e.g. Miracles) but still nobody complains about the Top. Sure, the format is faster, but iirc they got just half of the time we got for one game.
  
  As far as I remember I never faced time issues because of somebody using Top extensively, but very often because some people play so incredibly slow, that it's really putting your patience on the edge. They don't even not need a Top to stretch games - even with cutthroat aggro decks they manage it.
  
  Most players know their decks and its strategy well enough to figure out the order of the top three cards within seconds. Against these you never face time problems because of Sensei's Divining Top. Sometimes it does take time to decide how to order the cards you see with top, but that's usually when the game is on the edge. That's ok, I think and it's not so much different from the use of other cards in certain situations. Magic is still a game that involves some amount of thinking and decision making... I guess, I don't have to tell you. 
  
  @autoinclude in many decks: True, just like a bunch of other cards, like Wasteland, fetchlands, duals, Brainstorm in blue decks, Deathrite Shaman,... That shows: it's a powerful card amongst many others, so what? There are still some decks that don't wanna play Top (die-hard aggro comes to my mind - if you got the mana to use the top, the game is not developing in your favor).
  
  As mentioned before - it's a card that favors good decision making. Read: good players. Statistics and coincidences are part of the game (that makes the game diverse and interesting imho), but still I like to see the better player winning (even though that's often not me ). I'm usually quite irritated by random topdeck wins from nowhere.

[DarkLight]

BAN

In my opinion the card by itself is not so strong that I would vote for a BAN.
But in combination with the timeout factor, especially on greater tournaments, is for me a reason to vote for BAN.

[Tiggupiru]

I personally would like to see Top go, it's just pretty annoying and most of the situations with the Top just aren't that complicated. It's usually the case of trying to find either business spells or lands and weaker players usually find the best play given enough time and that just makes the games go longer.

Time sink from the Top is also kinda sneaky: The moment you activate Top and shift between the three cards takes time that adds up quickly, but you also need to consider topping in different stages of the game. Do I top on upkeep? On my main phase? You played something, should I Top in response to find a counterspell or do I need the mana for something else? Is that card good enough to swap for the Top and shuffle it away to gain some tempo?

Those are some of the most common questions on my mind every time I have top in play and they all take some time to answer even if I never actually activate the Top.

- I don't think council should ban it because of its powerlevel
- I don't think council should ban it because of its autoinclusion in most decks
- I don't think council should ban it because of it being time consuming

I think they should ban it because of all the above reasons combined make it too obnoxious.

Reason(s): One of the reasons I often hear when it comes to complaining about Sensei's Divining Top are time issues. To be honest, I cannot see this point. If that would really be an issue, Top would have been banned in Legacy long ago... but I never read any complaints in Legacy forums about that. (Though, I have to admit, I'm not a Legacy player. Maybe they just don't write about it because of superstitions ). There are decks in Legacy that want to utilize the top every game (e.g. Miracles) but still nobody complains about the Top. Sure, the format is faster, but iirc they got just half of the time we got for one game.

This isn't a very solid reasoning. Miracles is kinda of a niche deck in Legacy, it was in limelight for a brief period of time after Avacyn Restored came out (bringing us the miracles) and it faded out with the release of the next set Return to Ravnica as it brought really problematic Abrupt Decay to demolish the Counterbalance. Some people still play it as it's pretty much the only real control deck in Legacy, but those players usually know the deck well enough to pilot it fast enough to actually win two games. It's also the only deck that runs 4x Top because the card isn't that good in that format. The reason people don't complain about it is that it is only good in handful of decks and those decks aren't tier 1 by any means.

SDT is banned in Modern and it stays that way, as Wizards axed the Second Sunrise on the pretense of it taking too much time in tournaments and Top is almost as bad offender as that deck.