Thoughts about the current HL-Situation

[ChristophO]

Lash:
I did not want to insult you. I am sorry if you understand it like that. But please stay civil yourself as well. I merely wondered why you cared about control having problems against combo decks and thought that might be because you have a perspective bias because of playing staxx because I regarded you like that (so my bias). I never said that you are arguing for buffs to your deck or some such nonsense. There really is no reason to be so mad. And while the UR deck lost against the combo deck he still made the top 8 did he not? So the UR control deck still perfomed well. I have seen only a little bit of play of the TPS list, but Christoph looked to be tanking quite hard a couple of times. I do not think winning was as easy for him as this sorry excuse of a coverage made it out to be. That was more like: Look here is a cool winner!

I also can not relate to the Sturmgott post at all. The premise that there are half a dozen T1 combo decks simply is false. The viable T1 to T1.5 combo decks right now are(Angry Hermit, Pattern, Reanimator, and TPS now I guess if skilled pilot). The first three are somewhat vulnerable to grave hate and creature (spot) removal. The TPS deck I can not say too much about, but I believe a lot of winning lines for the deck invole the graveyard as well. There certainly are some that do not need the yard but I do not know how reliable they are in comparision to the other lines. Furthermore it is okay if a deck type also has weaknesses. This is my second point of criticism regarding the quoted Sturmgott post. I think it is wrong to demand bannings against the TPS combo deck eventhough it was very little played, by an extremely strong pilot (for that deck type). I think you greatly overvalue winning the top 8 and disregard the amount of sucess players with all kinds of archetypes had with reaching the top 8 of the ~120 man tournament.

@Maqi:
I agree that Tinker is more powerful than Natural Order because the targets are more powerful and artifacts are harder to kill and Tinker is cheaper. But they "do" the same thing. And the gap certainly has gotten closer the lasrt couple of years thanks to Primeval Titan, Progenitus, and Thragtusk I guess. The question then has to be is the power level difference big enough that one is banned while the other is not.

[hitman]

I strongly agree that the spoils mulligan needs a review. The most important things are said by LasH and ChristophO.

But there is still another point that annoys me. With the spoils mulligan games are getting more monotonous. this happens due to the fact that players are digging for the same cluster of game starting cards and toss away everything else. It is often said that all the creature based GWU+x decks are nearly the same even if they are focused on totally different strategies (beatdown, slow grind outs etc). In my oppinion this distortet view is caused by the spoils mulligan.

to the banned list

I am in the conception that there are still different kind of cards that should be banned. The first are cards that can be abused to simply overpower your opponent in the early game (Mishra's Workshop, Natural Order, Mana Drain). The second sort of cards are the ones that warb the whole game around them and make an easy win if the specific answer isn't found in time (Oath of Druids, Hermit Druid, Stoneforge Mystic). The last type are the i-win-on-resulotion cards (Scapeshift, Price of Progress).

I know it wouldnt be rational to ban all of these in a sudden but on the long run its not healthy to keep all of them. Right now I see Mana Drain, Natural Order and Stoneforge Mystic as the important ones to get precisely checked.

[coldcrow]

I saw the TPS win coming. That player successfully crossed some TPS variants I tinkered around with (artifacts, oath, FS+key+top), added some more beef (ad naus, doomsday etc) and the result was a critical mass of bombs in the hands of an experienced storm player.
While I enjoy playing with the deck, I agree that the singleton format isn't well suited for it.
One of the major aspects of tps is that it can win out of nowhere, if it has some mana or a good hand. Other combo decks need either more setup on the board (cephalid, pattern) or have only 1 I win button (scapeshift, thopter). storm can easily win of a resolved draw 7, yawgwill, pif and so on.
Considering all this it remains to be seen if the meta can adjust to a new bogeyman. In my opinion let's not just start banning left and right but wait if storm can put up results consistently.
And btw, "fun" or "boring" shouldn't be an argument if it comes to competetive magic.

PS: Aggro is one of TPS easier MUs. I am not sure which which critical turn the winning list has, but it was turn 4 for my lists. I can see RDW winning T4 too, but not too often. And stuff like Beats is often a a turn slower. And god forbid you do not hit the perfect curve.

[Tabris]

Ok guys sorry for that wall of text but I was very bored on my work today and also wanted to clear some things. I hope my small textstructure is helping you finding the mainpoints. I have to split it into two parts.

Introduction


Ok since there are a lot of premises and hidden assumptions I have the urge to make some of them clear and at least try to get some clarifying thoughts in this discussion. I appreciate the whole thing though and dont mean this comment in a insulting way. We have to start thinking about our goals which means we have to speak about the meaning of our banning policy (as christoph already demanded). And besides the denotation of our goals we also have to think about ways to get there. I will try to express my view and as a council member I am responsible for the current situation.

Purpose of the Banlist

Let me start with the question what a banlist (I will use BL for banlist in the further reading) should achieve. In my eyes its there to provide a enviroment which allows players to get a fair and diverse game. I have to explain what I mean with diverse and fair, which I will do but first I want to remind you that magic is still a luck based game (its hard to determine how the luck and skill (and skill means deckbuilding, decission making and strategy choice) factors are distributed) and its my perception that some people mix the appearance of some variance based events with the absolute role of some interactions we have in our meta.

Fairness


Now what is my understanding of a fair enviroment, coming from a philosophical education I am familiar with the controversy about fairness, justice and egality so its important for me to clarify my understanding of such words. Fair means in this case that players should start from a homogeneous way regarding deckchoices. That means they should be able to pick/build a deck they want and are not forced to pick cards/decks which raise their winpercentage by a huge amount (obv if you have a bad deck I dont want provide rules which allow you to win more then you should). I am not here to argue about making all decks the same but if players choose a deck for certain reasons like UW-Control for instance which has favorable matchups and least favorables but if a player decide to choose this deck he/she should not be forced to play it bc of its powerlvl but because of his/her ability to use the cards given in this archetype and to get him/her the maximum value out of it. Ofc we have cards in our pool which achieve some things better then others like control magic versus mind control. But there is enough room to get new cards in the decks which fullfill similar roles or even new roles which werent available previously (e.g. Karn Liberated for MonoU which isnt even a autoinclude but provides a vindicate for a deck which wasnt there before but its not like players who play that decktype will not include him and will lose bc of the lack of it).

On the other side we have some decks available like RDW or WW which dont have bad matchups but a lot of 50/50 ones which lead a lot of ppl to chose them for their tournaments. Redundancy (and this is a important point) can create a high powerlevel on its own even its not a game-related fact (imagine rating the deckpower on a scale from 1-10, WW and RDW or even Naya are on 7 just because they have so much cards which do the same (which is a good thing for them because they want to apply constant preassure) or can finish the game on its own (Armageddon, PoP)  and imagine a UW-Control artefact based deck which have only a powerlvl of 5 but could include Balance (the actual card!) and could raise the level to 6 maybe or even 7 bc the card itself (even its only one in 100) can win so many games against other decks (we calculate the power of the deck by adding dead cards in different matchups, powerlvl on single cards, curve, threats etc.). So my point is that the meaning of fairness in Highlander should mean something which assure a balanced  initial situation which dont make people lose bc they dont want to include some specific cards or play a certain deck.


Diversity


The next point would be the variance one which is closely related to the fairness. I want a lot of decks in my Highlander meta. I want ppl who try a lot and can be successful with deviant decks, card choices and strategies. At the same time I want ppl get punished for bad deckbuilding and bad decission making (not enough lands, wrong threat-lvl, manabase, answers-lvl and bad curve). Additionally when a good player chooses a 50/50 deck but plays constantly against a bad player which have also a 50/50 deck I want the good player to win more often bc he/she should get rewarded for the better decission making remember at the same time we cant influence the luck based factor of the game (the good player will try to minimize that factor to a limit where he/she cant control it anymore meaning spot the odds of the best plays and follow them) Meaning the better player should be rewarded and I want to make sure that the banning policy can secure that fact.


Staples and legit Winoptions regarding Diversity


Cards like Black Lotus, Ancestral Recal, Balance and Sol Ring reduce all that factors simply bc of their powerlevel and they create so absurd effects that the skill which one player invested can be so easily negated by the bad player (or even worse by a good player which could draw his/her Lotus first and get a huge advantage). I am ok with cards winning games by themselves (a fact that many ppl seem to ignore but thats how the game is made) like B2B, PoP, Armageddon, Contamination or Tarmogoyf (its not a coincidence that I chose a creature for green). You have to work for that card to win it the game (in case of PoP it can theoreticly win by itself if the opponent have 10 nonbasic in play but see it as a benchmark for greed and red is the color which punish that) and that is also ok for me to have some wardens or sentinels in the game. In my opinion diversity should be a huge concern for our banning policy since I appreciate a diverse meta and the luxury of choice. I dont want people to get forced to include a certain color or card to increase their winpercentage by a lot . Some argue that Demonic Tutor is such a card but we see that a lot of T8 lists dont even run B (Naya, RDW, WW, Bant) but Deathrite Shaman for instance is a card which led some ppl to add a bayou/ or badlands in their naya/bant decks but not DT , think about that

Another point which should be considered is availability (including costs) but we havent made clear to which level this concerns us but I remember that some cards amongst  things are banned because of that matter.

To summarize this I want people to get the luxury to try a lot of decks and cards like we see in legacy where players like Sam Black coming to a GP with a goblin bombardment, grave crawler, bloodghast. Lingering soul.deck fighting against jitte, jace 2.0, tendrils, charbelcher, dredge, show&tell, BUG SHARDLESS AGENT INTO ANCESTRAL VISIONS.deck. I want this for Hl as well.

Banning single cards

To preserve this doctrins we have to make sure that the appearence of certain cards/decks are not over-represented (but even if that is the case we have to look very carefully if that is a matter of unblance or just a preference thing of certain players (e.g. people in Berlin usually dont play 4/5c goodstuff at all but other regions want to restrict this archetype bc players tend to play with it so often and got bored or feel helpless against it). If people start building decks around certain cards like Birthing Pod, Oath of Druids, Survival of the Fittest, Hermit Druid etc. it usually means we have to look out for that single cards. We have to make sure if they are realy broken/unfair (perform in the way I described) and the whole deck is based on that or is that just a neat strategy which deserve to win (Scapeshift, Dream Halls, High Tide, Heartbeat, Pattern-Rector) if so many resources are invested. Also the possibility to interact with it (remember the unique situation we have in a singleton format not having enough answers in the deck or if so making the deck worse against other matchups + no sideboard) is important. To find a balance is not easy in case of Birthing Pod we had the feeling (and the stats) that people broke that card and get it to a lvl where we have to ban it otherwise we see 80% Birthing Pod decks and not only in a single region. Some players argue that Oath is a similar problematic card which lead players to focus on this one strategy and minimize the fun to play against that kind of deck which leads me to the next point.


Fun as a indicator or benchmark


If you get involved in this whole "we want players to have a lot of fun while playing magic/Highlander" you need to quantify the value and define the word fun. First you have to make clear what fun means in a magic related context secondly you have to measure it to get a hard argument about having it or not. Because if ppl start using this as an explanation for banning cards we have to make sure we speak about a objective matter and not about single cards players constantly losing against. Also we have to make a decission whos "fun" is worth more. The fun the staxx player is having while enjoying his build and seeing how the combo containing rising waters, tabernacle and frost bringer is crushing the naya player or the fun which is reduced by over 9000 from the same naya player. We would have to make a decission if a increase or decrease of fun is worth more then the other and also we have to quantify the value because who has the right to decide which card is fun or not (or even deck) and how bearable is it for other players (some kind of scale when you reach a limit you have to ban it).

Examples for "unfun cards"

A lot of people get annoyed if they play against monoU control since they have to "fear" cards like Bribery, Treachery, Vedalken Shackles or Back to Basic also a lot of game staling is involved by the nature of this decktype and some people value a short duration of a game higher then the actual gaming experience (which is weird but I encouter this view quite a lot). So a lot of people  have no problem if the creature get destroyed by a doomblade but are extreme annoyed if its get countered or even stolen. Also it would absolutely "fair" if they hardcast their own terastodon and destroy the board of the blue mage while he/she is a griefer stealing it with a bribery and using it against them. My point is, fun cant be a viable category/criteria/dictum to measure the ban-value of a card. We cant build the BL based on this fact.

Spoil Mulligan

I will get now to the spoil mulligan. We saw the argument that we dont need that mulligan bc the creators of the game dont include it in the first place. I dont think that this is a arugment on itself, bc that game is not flawless (its still the best game ever made) and that dont mean that the intention not to have this mulligan is wrong but neither its right to say, they didnt include it so it must be bad. The pro argument for the mulligan was the point where we want to prevent screw/flood. Well even I am a fan of the mulligan, that is not a valid point since statisticly there is no difference in getting flooded/screwed in comparision to "standard" 60 card decks. The percentage is the same. I dont have a problem with that abusive usage of the mulligan christoph described but I have to say the perception of variance/probability and the judgement about the numbers is very poor by most players.

So my point is if we try to improve the game with the mulligan its a legit point (with all the drawbacks) but we cant use it as an excuse for preventing screw/flood bc of the singleton format (some ppl think bc you are playing 100cards you have automaticly a higher variance (mana screw/flood) in comparasion with 60 card decks). One could make the point that this is the nature of our format we have a high variance in our decks by by definition (except for RDW, WW, Naya)so getting not every time the same cards made the format interesting in the first place but at the same time control decks had a hard time finding their answers (if you have 60card decks you have your specific answers and most at the time enough manipulation to get it). Nowadays the decks tend to low variance and try to get as much redundency as possible (martial coup is a brilliant card for UW control bc its threat and answer at the same time so that would be an example for increasing the reduncy but with a certain drawback (mana). Thats why the midrange 3-5c decks seem to dominate our format right now bc the cards have such a high powerlvl and control decks need to be optimized for that matchups but at the same time they need to be good enough vs control or pure aggro or even combo. Its hard for people to build these decks and I think thats why a lot of ppl tend to this goodstuff variants. I think the control decks have the tools to beat a wide range of decks.

[Tabris]

Part 2

Combodecks (TPS)


Now to the combo-deck problem. I guess its no wonder that after the win of a pure (not like pattern rector which can perform as a mid range rock deck) combo deck ppl are afraid of the T2 kill monster.  I have to make clear what my premises are relating to combo decks. The council itself is not united I guess what combo should do, how fast it should do it and to which point its healthy to have a certain number in the T8s. My view is that combo should be in the meta, obviously, and ppl should be afraid of it meaning the one Qasali Pridemage/Gaddock/Thalia should not be enough to beat Dreamhalls/Scapeshift/Hightide but we are not speaking about that kind but about TPS and Hermit Druid. Well to be honest I dont know if TPS is too strong or not. With our unbannings we wanted to give that deck a chance and we unbanned piece for piece but no appearence so far. Even Y-Will which is quite strong in other decks (Scapeshift/Oath/Staxx/MBC) was not seen that much. Now that someone have bring it to a big tournament and won it we have the attention and a lot of ppl are concered (which is a good thing) about the powerlevel. I can assure you if the deck is too strong and will dominate the T8s we will act and ban the important parts (btw. the deck was possible even before the unbanning of LED since the oath activation/doomsday pile are just winning by themselves, LED is just increasing the speed and sometimes the consistence) but I think we have to give the deck a chance and time.

We have to benchmark our format and see how the deck performs in this meta. I mean decks have to change and evolve (even if we are going to force that sometimes) which doesnt mean I want all of you to add Flusterstorms or things like that but we have to make sure that ppl try new things and try to get ahead of each other with new choices/strategies. The argument that only skilled player can use that deck is not a valid argument for allowing a broken deck. If this deck is too strong it doesnt matter if only skilled ppl can run it. Why should we reward already good players with a broken deck? And even if this is true, magic knowledge is not arcane or a secret it can be very rampant and fast acquired nowadays. So players would try to master this deck (besides TPS is not Rocket Science, its a lot of experience and summation


Hermit Druid


Hermit Druid is a strong deck in my view BUT I simply deny the fact that people cant interact with a 1/1 creature or a graveyard of an opponent. I can see how this deck can have ridiculously starts and I am not sure if we maybe need to ban the mentioned Dread Return to force the player at least playing memorys journey on a reanimator spell (which means he cant use dread return + reanimating spell or at least need more mana) so he/she is vulnerable to countermagic. As long as we dont see any Hermitdecks in T8s we cant ban them. I am against just the theoreticly argument "x could do y so pls ban z" as long as I dont see the bad thing happen I dont want to act. That is not a general rule I am following but in that case I want to see the crash before I destroy the dreams of deckbuilders out there. I know that can be frustrating if your local playgroup have issues with such a deck and one player is dominating the field but you could add more hate (which is not a good method/strategy in general and I dont like the saying "add more hate then" but in that case if all players have the same problem try that). Besides a lot of ppl have already good answers like Deathrite Shaman + Scavenging Ooze + Dryad Militant.

Summarized I want combo decks in our Meta I dont want them to constantly kill on T2 or T3 I guess its a bit random but I have the feeling T4 feels right. TPS, Druid, Pattern can sometimes kill on T3 (TPS even on T2) and most of the time T4. If your deck cant do anything with 4/3 Mana maybe you should improve it. I dont have a hard argument why 4 is right but I guess its a crucial turn for control decks nowadays (if they dont play vs control) and if they have done nothing so far they are done vs aggro. Maybe some of you can enlighten me here.


Stoneforge Mystic, Mana Drain, Natural Order


Stoneforge Mystic: The card was already discussed numerous times I thought ppl dealt with that issue and moved on but it seems a lot of players are still in conflict with that little squire (I know its not a Squire). I deny the fact that the 1/2 creature which gets batterskull or a good sword into the hand drives the meta in a crisis. I simply insist that your decks can handle that creature. We have so much cards which generate card advantage and the only thing which is "broken" is the batterskull scenario which is even not that hard to handle, we have bounce, pridemages, bant charms, disenchant (yea in berlin its a common thing to add this to your deck which doesnt mean we are next lvl but we adepted to things like swords, winter orb, humility, treachery, oath etc) and I rather see my opponent cast a SFM then a Confidant, Sylvan Library, Gaddock or Ank of Mishra bc most of the time its an extra turn bc he/she want to spent his/her next turn to get the skull/sword on board and equip in the following turn and you just cripple them. Guys srsly play arc trail, forked bolt, fiery justice or even go for the throat. The two spot removal is not good enough (speaking of swords, path) anymore and your precious FTK come sometimes to late to the party.

Natural Order: A lot of ppl say its like a green tinker, well its not. First of all its double green, secondly its 4 mana and you need a green creature (that are obvious facts but it seems they dont get in the calculation for the rating of the card). It is a very powerful card and I think it is indeed one of the strongest green cards (for the delicious midrange/goodstuff decks) besides Sylvan Library. But that is the point were ppl mix powerfull effect with overpowered/broken effects. As Christoph said we play an eternal format and its in the nature of our format that we have strong cards (Mana Drain is the next one) (dont want to run into Naturalistic fallacy) and I dont want to play Fallen Empires Limited here (ok its polemic) but a format with cute and strong cards. Two years ago ppl played Progenitus in their decks and were afraid of Bribery and cutted the Progenitus, nowadays we have with all the goodstuff decks and their potent manabase (meaning good utility lands)  primeval titan as target no. 1 well here is the news, Bribery is still good getting this titan.

I absolutely see how frustrating can it be to loose against T3 Finks into T4 Thragtusk thanks to NO as the RDW deck but your deck is designed to follow one path and ppl have cards against that in their decks so since your plan is so narrow its not unlikely that one answer vs your plan is most of the time a very good one. (I could imagine that T3Finks into T4Thragtusk is still good against other decks too but control have countermagic/mindcensor etc.). Besides other goodstuff decks run the same cards (not traping myself here and admit that this card falls under the criterium format dominance since I said I want certain staples in their respective colors but not forcing ppl to include that colors all the time when they build a deck). It would be interesting to see how many ppl failed to resolve their NO s over the time.


Mana Drain: Simply a no. Why would you ban a reactive spell which can sometimes lead into a play which does not magicly appear in their hand and does not automaticly win but was in the deck all the time and just waited all the time to get casted. Sure the timeframe was modified and you have to handle the Karn on T5 instead of T7/8 but you still have to handle him eventually (and I never heard a RDW Player moaning about Drain simply they see that as another Counterspell but the Goodstuff/Control Player now have to deviate from his plan and must interact with the opponent) but Mana Drain is still just a counterspell which cant win the game by itself. Besides its one of two hardcounter for 2 mana which has no conditions to be cast which is a huge factor for a control deck.

Again this is the category of strong effects in our eternal pool. I can see how the cards in the Controldeck are balanced by their manacosts and Drain is ignoring this effect or enables them to do more things in one turn but its not overpowered in a way that ppl constantly losing against it. And besides Naya, WW, RDW, are very often in T8 and this meets the criteria for not needing the card to win-category.

[Dreamer]

Some notes here:

@aggro-control-combo triangle, it has never actually been true. It's a very oversimplistic thing and expecting it to hold true in the world of modern Magic is daydreaming. For a model that is simple but still has some analytical and predictive qualities, I'd look to Chingsung Chang's Circle of Predation articles:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/sculpting-formats-circle-predation/
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/circle-predation-part-2-indepth/

@The Spoils Mulligan
I think the Spoils mulligan is great. It means less flooding, and the lesser land counts likewise. Less flooding, more spells. That's amazing.

@Banning cards

First: Please, pleasepleaseplease concentrate more on the common case than the outlier. That is to say, it's okay that a deck can kill on T2. It is not okay if that deck's actual fundamental turn is 2. The first implies a god hand, the second implies common consistency. Pattern can kill T3. An old version could kill on T2. Yet T4-5 or much, much later is usually more common.

Stoneforge, Natural Order and Drain? Uh, wut. Let alone with all the Tinker comparisons for Natural Order. A quick Order is crushing (esp. in Pattern where you basically get a Titan that never dies), yes, but it still needs a bit of setup. The T3 Order is possible but far from the most common case.

Suggesting Storm bans after an accomplished Doomsday pilot wins a single goddamn tournament with it? People. GET REAL.

If there is one card I'd like to ban, it's Black Vise. Not for power, it's not actually a problem in that regard. But what it does is essentially turn "keep sketchy hand because you won't get better anymore either" into sheer torture and near autoloss. It may be my utility critter filled pet deck for which that is uniquely a problem, but it's zero fun. The card is a random burn spell otherwise, and you can't play around it (with those clunky keeps) anywhere near to the extent you can with Ankh of Mishra and the like.

Shahrazad's entire purpose is making games time out.

[Maqi]

About Fun

Tabris said:

My point is, fun cant be a viable category/criteria/dictum to measure the ban-value of a card. We cant build the BL based on this fact.

I strongly feel that "fun" should be one of our primary benchmarks when it comes to bannings. I agree though, that "fun/unfun" is hard to measure. The discussion about banning because of "unfunness" is not new and we can learn from it.
You might remember that a while ago, when Trinisphere got the axe in Vintage and Standard Affinity was annihilated through massive bannings, there was quite the uproar in the MtG community. The banning didn't seem to be justified regarding the raw numerical facts.
But WotC changed their policy about bannings, realizing that "fun" had to be one of the criteria that could prompt a ban. It might even be the most important. Here are some snippets from Aaron Forsythe's explanation why the bannings happened:

Was Standard that bad? Was the format actually not diverse enough, and not solvable enough? Looked at purely analytically, the format probably wasn't that bad. Decks emerged that could beat Affinity. You could play something other than Affinity or Tooth and Nail and have a decent chance to succeed. If the DCI attempted to solve every issue as if it were a complicated math problem, we very well might have done nothing again.
After all, banning cards is bad, and we only want to ban cards if a format was lopsided enough to warrant action, which Standard may not have been. The best deck only won X% of the time, was beaten by the second-best deck Y% of the time, and decks #3, 4, and 5 were all played in reasonable numbers. If we like the math, no problem. Just like last time.

But in the past three months R&D and the DCI have been reminded that Magic is not a series of balanced equations, spreadsheets of Top 8 results and data of card frequencies. Magic is a game played by human beings that want to have fun.

"We like to avoid having to solve problems by banning cards, as that leads to a culture of fear."

Trinisphere is a nasty card, no bones about it. It does ridiculous things in Vintage, especially combined with Mishra's Workshop. As I've said in a previous column, we almost restricted it before it was even released.
Now that it has been floating around for a while, the Vintage crowd understands that the card does good things for the format, and bad things to the format. While it does serve a role of keeping combo decks in check, it also randomly destroys people on turn one, with little recourse other than Force of Will. And those games end up labeled with that heinous word—unfun. Not just "I lost" unfun, but "Why did I even come here to play?" unfun.

I will attempt to define what in my opinion makes a card "banworhty unfun". I believe there are three basic dimensions that provide miserable play experiences:

1. Non-interactivity - rendering the actions of the opponent irrelevant or preventing the opponent from participating in the game (Trinisphere,  Mana Drain (!), Blood Moon...)
2. Randomness - Ooops, I win button (Mind Twist, Price of Progress, Scapeshift...)
3. Game warping - in a sense that the card allows only for very specific strategic options, demands an immediate answer or will take over the game (Natural Order, Stoneforge Mystic, Dark Confidant, Birthing Pod, Survival of the Fittest, Oath of Druids...)

Obviously these are just ideal categories. A card will typically fall into several categories at he same time, but will "weigh" more in some and less in others.

Let's take Mana Drain for example. Here I think we have a card that has some kind of random factor when it comes to its strength. Drawn in the lategame, the Drain usually isn't much more than just a counterspell.
In the early- through midgame states however, it creates a scenario where your opponent's options are basically all shut off – therefore I categorized it as non-interactive. He either plays into Drain or does nothing – both bad options for him. I recognize that there are situations where you can "play around Drain". But those are not the norm.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not campaigning for ban of Mana Drain here. I feel that enough variables are involved with the card so that it can stay off the banned list (like not having a proper follow-up play, leaving UU up is telling and your opponent might play around it, it's only good in certain stages of the game etc.).
I just want to state that I can see the problematic potential of the card. I feel that if we wouldn't be a singleton format and we would experience the power of the Drain more often and on regular basis, the card would long since be banned (just take a look at Legacy).

I guess the point I want to get across here is the following. If a card scores very high in one or more of the above three categories of Non-interactivity, Randomness and/or Game warping and is of sufficient play strength we should think about a ban even if the metagame seems to be in a healthy state (read: diverse, you can play what you want and have success)

[W0lf]

About Fun


But WotC changed their policy about bannings, realizing that "fun" had to be one of the criteria that could prompt a ban.

WotC changed their policy because they want to sell their products and little whiny kids have rich parents.

ps unban Jitte!!11

[Jopanges]

Last year we had a huge discussion about the dominance of 4-5c Goodstuff and Naya Decks and the weakness of control strategies. One of the conclusions back then was these kind of decks cannot be weakened by certain bannings since they can easily replace those cards without loosing much because they are just playing the best cards of all colours. So the approach to break their dominance by strengthening other decks through unbanning some "enabler" cards came up. By the last two updates cards like Enlightened Tutor, LED, Dread Return and Yag Will became unbanned and lead to a very diverese T8 with just two Goodstuff Decks (3 if you count Jund), no Naya Decks and two clear Control Decks. The whole event was won by a TPS Deck which used nearly all of the 'freshly' unbanned cards. So I would call the environment very healthy and the unbanning strategy a great success.

So why do you want to switch back to the situation a year ago by banning all the combo enablers and strong control cards? Do you really like T8's consisting of 4x Goodstuff, 3x 3-5c Aggro and one MonoR/WW?

(this excludes Stoneforge Mystic and Natural Order which should be banned because they are one card combos which can be included in nearly every deck without any further commitments)

[LasH]

First of all i wanna say that i like the discussion. Alot of interesting opinions.

Natural Order: A lot of ppl say its like a green tinker, well its not. First of all its double green, secondly its 4 mana and you need a green creature (that are obvious facts but it seems they dont get in the calculation for the rating of the card). It is a very powerful card and I think it is indeed one of the strongest green cards (for the delicious midrange/goodstuff decks) besides Sylvan Library. But that is the point were ppl mix powerfull effect with overpowered/broken effects. As Christoph said we play an eternal format and its in the nature of our format that we have strong cards (Mana Drain is the next one)

Not a rare scenario: it goes like "first turn manaelf" 2nd turn a nice 2/3 drop 3 rd turn NO. Game. Double Green is absolutly no restriction neither is the creature. Ive never seen NO staying on my hand as i played a random bant list. Never. Futhermore NO keeps it strenght for the entire game. You are always happy to draw it.

And if i remember our games we played in cup 2011 and our games played for the deck test - all games got decided by Natural Order. Games were totally uninteresting after resolving. Even if i lose the titan the next turn, that just means my opponent stays in the game with a ressource disadvantage which he can barely recover from (wasteland is nearly always the first card hitting the battlefield by titan).

There's one thing that i really like to state here.

Tinker is much more broken than Natural Order. I don't know how one could think otherwise.

Turn 1: Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Mox Diamond, Tinker => Blightsteel Colossus
Turn 1: Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Signet; Turn 2: Tinker => Sundering Titan (killing their land), 2nd land drop

Thats the same randomness like having turn 1 trinisphere. Like having T1 mox hermit druid or a turn 2 kill by Tps. And now to a much more realistic scenario: we dont have tinker and draw blightsteel or sundering titan or get a bribery. I dont think the green titan is such a dead draw like the colossus or the sundering titan. And believe me if there would be an artifact primeval titan he would get played over blightsteele for sure. Sundering titan depends on the bord.

Dont get me wrong i think tinker is op but so is NO.

Fair means in this case that players should start from a homogeneous way regarding deckchoices. That means they should be able to pick/build a deck they want and are not forced to pick cards/decks which raise their winpercentage by a huge amount (obv if you have a bad deck I dont want provide rules which allow you to win more then you should).

This is a pretty good quote and i hope we will end there someday.

So why do you want to switch back to the situation a year ago by banning all the combo enablers and strong control cards? Do you really like T8's consisting of 4x Goodstuff, 3x 3-5c Aggro and one MonoR/WW?

Thats still the common T8 according to mtgpulse for the last months. And i dont know why you say ban "all the combo enablers". I dont read that in this thread. For my point of view i just want these decks to be a turn later in comboing. And thats mostly the case if you ban the mentioned cards.

[W0lf]

TPS won the last GP, RDW before that and you still complain about Natural Order and Stoneforge, sad noobs.....

[Orkpopper]

You'll find some more thoughts about this topic here (in german): klick

[ChristophO]

T4 Goldfish is really easy to do with an aggro deck.

T1 -> 2 Power dude
T2 -> 3 Power dude, attack for 2, opp. at 18
T3 -> 3 Power dude, attack for 5, opp. at 13
T4 ->  potential attack for 8, opp at virtual 5. And you can do a lot of stuff to increase the ouput. Tricks, Haste creatures (imageine playing Hellrider, Bloodbraid elf, Vengevine etc on that T4), burn, etc.

You can easily do this in Highlander, I even goldfish T4 with some limited decks (if you have the t1 2 power one drop which is rare in many draft formats). 

[Madsam]

TPS won the last GP, RDW before that and you still complain about Natural Order and Stoneforge, sad noobs.....

you know, there are other tournaments than gps.
If you can't express yourself without insulting everyone, better stop posting, ty.

[carte_blanche]

I'm with Tabbris and Jopanges on most points concerning the banning of cards should be based on long-term observation or obvious meta shifts. I don't want to repeat that.

Concerning the spoils mulligan: Most of the time we play HL anyway for the last years so I admit, that I'm a bit biased. I'd say that the spoils mulligan fixes the flood / screw problem a, so I think it's a good thing that it corrects a minor flaw in the game rules. However I have not much time to turn cards, so my input on that topic should be weighted with by this.

@Natural Order, Stoneforge Mystic: Not so long ago, I thought these are problem cards... but I'm not so sure if that's valid anymore because of the unbannings during the last year. For my part, I would give the cards additional time on the watchlist before making a decision.

@Hermit Druid: I seldom win if I play Druid on turn 2 without additional protection. Since decks have adapted to cheap creature threats, they can usually deal with it easily. Moreover, you should not forget that even if you got the druid online on turn 2, it's not an auto win, since your opponet might interact with you via countermagic or because you got one of the many combo pieces on your hand (consumes time to get rid of it). That's not the usual case but you still should consider the not optimal to average draws as well, not just the nuts draws (as many people are doing here). If you got Chrome Mox + Druid + Protectoin for 0 mana and no combo pieces in your hand - ok, that's the nuts draw. I think it's ok to win that game. Other decks produce starting hands you cannot beat as well. There is no reason to be afraid of variance... If one is considering that as well, we're back at the point of consistency that Tabris already mentioned.

Good night and thumbs up to LasH for starting this very interesting discussion.