Few things in metagame

[Mir]

When it comes to eternal singletons - no matter its EDH or Highlander people tend to build up decks based on last editions and some other products such as Planechase, Premium foil decks such as Graveborn. In last year a lot of old popular cards were reprinted and other new cards came. Some cards became more available, other new came and only one single card was not reprinted, but suddenly vanished from all shops all around...

Several times I have witnessed following game opening in EDH.

Swamp, Entomb, you go...
something
Animate dead, Primeval titan

5 out of 8 decks i play against also had Cabal Coffers (planechase) and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (the card which dissapeared from shops) in deck along with green titan (new card). In ideal situation this is also fueled with Dark Ritual (Divine vs Demonic, Planechase) and titan is in play in first turn. Also Entomb and Animate dead became available in Graveborn too.

Considering that Entomb is banned I believe that the worst scenario in Highlander will take more time or mana to play it as fast. What I still feel to be a bit broken is fact that Titan allows to search for any two lands. Cabal Coffers + Tomb of Yawgmoth is the most used combination. Consider this also when putting into play manlands. Another option? Urzatron. Or Valakut the molten pinnacle. when it works the titan itself deals 6 damage and valakut 6 more.

I wonder why no-one ever inspected the power level of the Primeval titan in combination with basic reanimating... no matter of format It allows to search for two lands once per turn at least, and from my experience searching for two cards allows faster and easier collecting of combo.

This is an example how metagame may change. Its mostly caused by availability of cards on the market.

My question to people here whether they feel same influence, and if they consider newly printed cards in their deck or prefer to dig in old cards...

[MMD]

Beside the fact that your senario is only broken with Entomb (which is banned in the format I care of) you are speaking about a Reanimator deck which does such (usually even better) things in turn 2-4 if undisrupted. Primeval Titan is not even a must play in a Reanimator deck IMO as there are already so many viable Reanimator targets available.

Primeval Titan costs 6 Mana, so it is either a lategame or a (semi-)combo spell. I expect to do broken things with this mana requirement nowadays because there are many game defining and often ending spells which costs less (e.g. Jace 2.0). In some metagames the Titan is even a suboptimal card choice because the games are either too fast or combish for a 6 mana creature.

And yes, I also agree that new cards replace older ones which is due the power creep but also because people want to test and play new cards in their pet decks from time to time. I don't see a problem here because evolution is always useful. When I build new decks I often browse through my HL binder and sometimes old dusty cards are perfect for the new deck strategy and its synergies and/or the shifted metagame. Also forgetting about the old goodies is an internet problem. Everyone studies T8 lists and uses 90% of the cards for their own "creations".

For example: I just included Loyal Retainer into my Reanimator deck because I splashed W for Unburial Rites and the fatties creature base was already full of Legendary creatures anyway. Also Gamble and Firestorm are much better with the new available Flashback spells. If you don't take a look at the old cards you will miss a lot of synergies with the new cards. But old cards without new synergies will mostly disappear in a competitive metagame. Nobody plays cards like Juzam Djinn or Erhnam Djinn any more because there are a lot of new creatures which are strictly better.

[Mir]

I omitted one thing with Primeval titan. If his ability resolved few times it can put most lands out of library. Drawing cards is then "better".

Since we mostly play casual games we decided to not play old broken such as Cephalid breakfast - even at the time it became legal again. This is mostly true afterall. If someone manages to bury and reanimate card its not usually big eldrazi or Iona for example. For similar reasons players dont play some cards just for having fun.

Its not part of any banlist, more than some sort of "unwritten etiquette" for each playgroup. Some playgroups dont play Back to Basics or Winter orb since it just slows the game down, while others dont have any trouble with it.

Primeval Titan arrived some time ago, and too many players started to use him with Cabal Coffers and Urborg. How to react on meta, while not breaking the banlist or etiquette...

Shall we ban Primeval titan? No. Shall we ban Cabal Coffers? Well since Tolarian Academy is banned I see this as a possibility, but still NO. The right way is to find an easy way how to punish this interaction. The weak point is the Cabal Coffers itself. Lets look at the cards which can do so:

Back to basics
Wasteland
Tectonic edge (sub-optimal but possible)
Vedalken Plotter
Political Trickery
Annex, Confiscate, Volition Reins

And those are only possibilities I would add into my own deck - and meta is evolving. However if the community would react by banning Titan, or any land included in this interaction that will stop the evolution of the metagame, taking it back before this interaction.

If the community allows me to add mentioned cards into my deck without any whinning or modifing our local banlists then the metagame is evolving and changing. However if someone start to argue in a manner like "land destruction is not fair" and the result is local banning of wasteland for example then we have a problem.

The questions are:
1. How the metagame is evolving on local level?
2. Are there people able to maintain it?

This requires someone to catch cards and interactions which are being played too often and see whether there are some universal solutions, which does not require to buy 5 cards, 20 dollars each, and then encourage players to find a way how to attack the weak spots of such interaction on their own.

[W0lf]

You forgot to mention alot of other cards that can disrupt your nice little combo most of them played in red decks
Besides that, I don`t see which multicolored deck would want urborg + cabal coffers cause coffers would be useless in a multicolored deck if you draw it alone.The random Nature of our beloved Format makes Cards like this usually not good enough. So sry dude

[Mir]

A black, blue tutors and other green and newly one colorless land tutors makes combination more than random... Thats something what people use to forget.

[Ball.Lightning]

Mir: I would not call your presented situation as some special combo. It is just some sort of synergy. But I realy doubt, that deck, that is trying to reanimate early some big tread is concerned much about lategame and will be able to abuse excesive mana. Probably you will do better with reanimated Iona or Gin Gitaxias or Griselbrand or anything else ;-)

Banning titan seems realy silly to me.

[Tabris]

Sometimes I think people dont understand what banning a card means and what should be accomplished by that procedere.

[Nastaboi]

I really don't get the point OP is trying to make. They are playing casually and have their own house rules, which is OK. Is there something else I am just not seeing?

[Mir]

Tabris and Nastaboi you are both right.

House rules are good if people are using them in a manner which makes the game more interesting for them. I would not call it "local banning" since such thing is dangerous. Its because what Tabris mentioned - people do not understand what banning a card means.

This is something where was I pointing to.

Some syngergy became bit overused in small playgroup (5 out of 8 players has it). BallLightning is right that reanimating Iona or other strong creature would be better, but lets say that Iona and other mentioned cards are considered to be "not polite" by our house rules.

Any attempt to ban Primeval Titan on our local base and then trying to ban it everywhere would harm the format. Instead it would be better to adapt our own metagame to such situation. If people are making a lot of black mana which is later misused to play big bad creatures, only thing what a player need is not to ban a card, but first identify all possible cards which can break the synergy.

But how can player easily solve such situation in metagame?
Wasteland is possible. But costs... 20-40 dollars?
Tectonic edge is also possible, even when its bit sub-optimal.

However ask yourself a question which one of those two cards you want bring to a tournament? (in case that you are expecting this syngergy).

1. Its bit hard to came to tournament with the suboptimal cards and expect good results.
2. If people are used to house rules they may be surprised that some old cards are even legal.
3. People are not well informed when it comes to power level of cards in different formats as standard 60 cards deck wih 4 copies of each card.

An example:
I was told by some local players not to play Static Orb and Meekstone. When I asked for reasons i was told "it does nothing". An interesting explanation indeed - from an aggro player who is not willing to change his deck. I changed playgroup and left the local forum. People were quite annoyed that I play both cards, but they were able to adapt for such situation.

This is a situation I faced 2 years ago. People were giving me bad references about cards - apparently because they themselves were not well informed about real power level of some cards.