Thoughts about the current HL-Situation

[meteora]

@Tabris: So diversity is a Naya mirror won by the player who will draw SFM or even worse NO first? Then this is not about being the better player but just even more luckbased.

Apart from that your assumptions are correct imo. Thumbs up to Jopanges´ post, too.


-> regarding TPS - which it is not: people it´s not a true storm deck if you didn´t realise. It´s more of an oath control deck that finally abuses Ywill than being a TPS deck honestly... so where is the problem if oath decks are fine?

[Dreamer]

Naya mirror seems like just about the last matchup where Stoneforge could be considered an autowin.

[MMD]

So TPS-Oath winning the whole thing has reanimated this forum again. Fine.

I would also like to give my feedback to this topic with another wall of text for you 

TPS-Oath / Hermit bannings:

Yes, TPS-Oath has won a 120 player tournament. But is it the new DTB and needs immediate banning action? Probably not. The few games I watched the TPS player won fast mostly because of the high tutor density for Oath of Druids and not  because of LED/Past in Flames or Yawgmoth´s Will. I think that the only viable way for the TPS player to win before Turn 4 is to resolve Oath of Druids in Turn 2 which should happen very seldom. If there is no fast Oath even the TPS player has to play "fair" – If you can say that for a TPS deck at all. Sure, midrange and creature control decks will still be a good matchup for him but this is nothing but a spotted hole in the metagame which could be repaired by playing RDW, heavy discard or counter control strategies.

I don´t know for the community but I can accept a very rare and unprotected T2-3 win for a such a deck with a fundamental (and protected) T4-5 kill because the other decks can either win or control the game on T4-5 as well. The same is valid for Hermit Druid Combo deck. I don´t think the combo itself of this (and the TPS) deck should be hindered as it will degrade these decks to Tier 3 status. Why should I select TPS or Hermit Combo when there is no chance to be faster than any other deck in the meta. How should a TPS/Hermit player be rewarded to choose such an inconsistent and vulnerable deck? How likely is it to have a winning Oath/Hermit activation in Turn 3? I am bad in math but I just see Hermit/Oath itself plus Worldly/Enlightened/(Sylvan) Tutor and other tutors + fast mana. - Please do not kill TPS because it won one single tournament. Why do not let the meta adapt try to adapt to it first?

Other bannings:

IMO there are four categories of cards which people think they are banworthy (does this word exist at all?):

a) Cheap single card combos (which certainly still need a certain deck setup)       
- Oath of Druids
- Hermit Druid (together with Dread Return)

b) Ooops. I win cards which are either more expensive as a) and/or need at least a second card and/or need a certain game state
- Just listing the main cards which are mentioned in this topic: Natural Order, Yawgmoth's Will/Past in Flames, Scapeshift
- Mishra´s Workshop - does not really fit into any category but a conditional 3 Mana land feels comboish to me

c) Most powerful stand alone cards in HL
- Mana Drain
- Demonic Tutor
- Stoneforge Mystic

d) Cheap Tutors
- Wordly Tutor
- Enlightened Tutor
- (Mystical Tutor) – have fun in a Combo/MiracleControl meta if you unban this monster

My evaluation of these categories:

To a)    These two cards are hard to beat if resolved early but banning them would kill two valid strategies in HL and a couple of decks with it. There should be another way to keep these two card in control. – please do not ban them

To b)   Most of the cards in this category win games big and there are always a lot of players which feel that they lost against a card which is overpowered and unfair but in fact they lost against a combination of cards which must be more powerful by definition, otherwise everybody would play multicolour good stuff piles without synergies. But IMO most of the cards are more or less "fair" if you take into account that you need a certain deck type / game state set up to let them shine. Even Natural Order, which many players want to get banned, is not overpowered. I don´t know for other areas but I either face burn, counter/discard or combo decks and every blue deck plays two Clones and a Bribery. Natural Order is quite mediocre against such strategies. – please do not ban any of them

To c)   These cards will be on the watch/ban list and will split the community forever. I understand them as the most powerful cards in our format which are on the borderline of fairness and power level. I would neither whine if you ban them or let them stay as either decision feels correct to me. – feel free to do what you want 

To d)   IMO these 1CC instant tutors push category a) over the top and will also be a risk to push other single cards and combos over an acceptable power level. I do not think that it is healthy to have the Mirage Tutors in our format at all. – please ban them

Food for thought: Why is Umezawa's Jitte not on the watch list? Sure, Jitte dominates the mirror. But there are also other cards (see: Bonfire of the Damned and Parallax Wave) which do this. Also Jitte is too slow against many Combo and heavy Control builds such as Oath and TPS. At least when Stoneforge Mystic (and/or Enlightened Tutor gets banned) I ask to see this card on the watch list. (The same would be valid for Library of Alexandria IF there would be no Life from the Loam)

Spoils Mulligan

A double-edged sword.

I love the Spoils by myself and I think it is really an improvement to the official MTG rules as it decreases screw/flood situations and therefore makes more fun to me. But I don't think the mulligan is necessary for HL anymore as there are enough card choices to build a solid deck strategy without it. So the "official" reason for the Spoils mulligan is obsolete IMO. Also the Spoils mulligan supports greedy multicolour strategies which is an effect which should be avoided.

I have no problem to abuse the mulligan (land count, curve out, etc.) either as this is currently part of the game. I also think that aggro abuses it best but control/combo requires it the most.

On the one side I would like to avoid rules which are not conform to the official ones (spoils mulligan, gold bordered cards, etc.) to keep distance from the kitchen table mentality but on the other hand I feels right to improve the game itself.

My opinion is that killing the Spoils mulligan have several pros and contras and I can understand either side of the discussion here. – I am really uncertain regarding the Spoils mulligan and can live with either decision/situation.

Multicolour deck problem

I think this is still a valid problem in HL to keep the discussion up. It is too easy to splash colours and play the same approx. 80 cards in every deck. Thanks to Finland for testing the Fetchland ban idea which identified the problem of a 2C mana base being weaker as a 3C mana base. At least the last T8 showed a lot of "answers" to this problem which are: RDW, Fast Combo and non basic hate midrange/control. I hope the format can "heal itself" from the multicolour curse. – further observation needed

Sideboard

Another food for thought. I was not able to find the official council statement about the reason to have no sideboard but I suppose it is the time issue. If so: I don´t think that sideboarding in HL consumes too much time and you can make in in 3 minutes without any bigger problems, when you have defined your matchup strategies BEFORE the tournament, which should go without saying when you prepare yourself for a tournament properly.

A sideboard would further reduce the luck factor and reward the skilled and prepared player which I think should also be the focus of this format. It would also help to avoid the dominance of certain deck strategies and improve the win percentage against "unwinnable" matchups. - I would like to have a Sideboard in HL, please!

..and last but not least:

The Real Deal!

I would like to underline that the main improvement for our format cannot be done with a Banned List, or changing certain fundamental rules of the game. The main issue is still the insufficient communication and marketing of the Highlander format itself. Without a new homepage design, concentration on one international forum, an improved (online) tournament activity, recruitment of new players, advertising in other forums/shops/tournaments...HL will in best case stay on today's level and probably die out in a couple of years, when the active council members and "HL-scene oldies" don´t have time any more to play this game.

So long,

[LasH]

I have to add one thing which i read a lot in the discussion:

I did not open this thread because of the GP. I do criticize combo-decks in general because they weaken control decks even more in my opinion. I dont want to ban them i hope to make these decks just a bit slower.

I played many games with coldrow (one of his favorite decks was tps - even before we got these unbannings). I agree with the gp winner (statement on german forum): His deck is not even a "real" TPS. He plays a unique style of the deck.

Try to avoid using tournament results as indicator (because to less tournaments, local meta, to less players in general etc, combo decks gets rarely used for testings). I played the decks TPS/Cephalid (not his version) and started this thread because of my experience in gaming, not because of a tournament. A very good statement about this comes from user nina (german forum):

She/he? said that only the minority of the players chooses to play TPS in general and on kitchen table. I totally agree.

If you want to judge about the deck - play it. I played a list from here http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=840.0 and a cephalid combo list from tabris (but without 2nd winoption buried alive ooze combo, instead i added sylvan safekeeper, divert, flusterstorm and apostels blessing)

[Nemavera]

As already stated above:

My deck ist NOT a TPS deck. It does in fact share a lot of cards, nevertheless it plays out in a completely different way.
To my mind the best description is Combo-Control. I just cut all creature-removal for a fast kill and tried to race aggro instead of trying to outlast them.
Moreover I just cut all crappy Oath-creatures and decided to run a 100%-kill if oath triggers once. Nothing sucks more than putting Emrakul or some other shitty creature into play and then getting it o-ringed/pathed/sworded.
I studied the format, found out that control-decks have to play lots of creature-removal and that the format is nearly all about boardpresence and boardcontrol. So I built a deck that wins on the stack and without creatures.

If you test the deck, please change the deck in the following way:

-Necropotence
-Beacon of Destruction
-Noxious Revival
-Past in Flames

+Meditate
+Elektolyze
+Fire/Ice
+Izzet Charm

Greetings
Christoph Alsheimer

[coldcrow]

@Nemavera: Teeg/Thalia/Censor suck right?

Btw, congrats winning the thing with "almost-tps"!!

[Vazdru]

My deck ist NOT a TPS deck. It does in fact share a lot of cards, nevertheless it plays out in a completely different way.
To my mind the best description is Combo-Control.

changed 
http://mtgpulse.com/eventrevisions/11692

[Nemavera]

@Nemavera: Teeg/Thalia/Censor suck right?

Btw, congrats winning the thing with "almost-tps"!!

Thanks :>
Yeah, the winning list had just Karakas, Repeal and Beacon (and counterspells) as outs.

Back to topic:
To my mind the format is really balanced, but I'm aware that there are many "sick" cards like Oath, NO or Stoneforge Mystic. Yet HL is an eternal format, so it's in its nature that we have some really powerful cards. And if you're playing Griselbrand to cheat it into play via Oath and your opponent plays Bribery, well you're screwed.
IF Oath would become a dominant strategy (which it is not at the moment) you could consider banning it again, but at the moment, there is no reason at all.

[Cadaj]

Sideboard:
I dont agree with the proposal of a full sideboard as you would have to raise the timelimit maybe to 70min per round.
A big tournament goes way to long anyway right now so i dont want to go even further into the night.

Maybe allowing a Wishboard for the Judgmentcycle would allow controldecks to have a little Toolbox (maybe allow 5 cards).
Most combodecks would probably not put their pieces in this kind of board cause it doesnt increase the number of cards of that type.
Aggrodecks generally dont want to tutor anyways.
Biggest counterargument for this is obviously the goodstuffdecks as they can theoretically make good use of all of the wishes.
Thats why the board would need to be very small to not allow support for more than 2 wishes and even then it should be very limited (if 5 cards you only have 2-3option per wish).

I know this idea is not entirely thought through and would need a good amount of consideration, but im just throwing it out there.

Mulligan:
I dont really like the spoilsmulligan but for HL its the better option rather than the conventional mulliganrule.
The only option to reduce the abuse of this rule is probably to limit the cards one can spoil, although that wouldnt eliminate the problem that Creaturedecks benefit the most although needing it the least.
Another option that would maybe worth testing would be that the spoiled cards are revealed.
It would add another dimension to the game as you need to think about what you want your opponent to see.
You can trick him by showing him specific cards or you have to keep some cards because you dont want to show your strategy right away.
Controldecks would be able to prepare better as they have some information for what to dig (which is a big problem for control in G1).
Obviously you both players would need to lock their spoiled cards before revealing.

The best option in my oppinion is the "Dutch Mulligan".
The conventional Mulliganrule would basically stay the same just that you get an extra Mulligan on 6.
So it would go 7-6-6-5... maybe in doubles from 6.
I really like this cause a mull to 6 is ok most of the time, the problem starts at 5, which is nearly unwinnable if the opponent has a decent 7.
It also would put HL back in line with "real Magic" and so it would be easier to promote to new players i think.

Combo:
A stable Combodeck should beat a "fair" Aggrodeck (RDW, Naya, WW,...) period, thats just how the game is designed, so i dont get all the whining here.
The only Aggrodecks that come to my mind that broke that rule were based on inherently broken mechanics (Jund and Affinity).
Current Aggrodecks have a way better shot anyways as the printpolicy of Wizards (the reason why i dont like Magic as much anymore) has sped up the clock of creaturebased decks by 1-2 turns compared to 5-6 years ago.
TPS and Hermitcombo are nowhere near as powerful as FlashHulk was for example.

Hope the community can discuss on my ideas.

[sibert-msmtg]

Comments:

@Spoils Mulligan

I agree that things have changed in MTG since the S.M. was established. I think the point might be, that it is not necessary anymore to get a stable manabase (enabling participation in the game). But, as others stated above, Screw, Flood and the like are parts of Magic, but rather unwanted ones. I think it is up to a test, what mulligan rule makes sense to apply.

In regular Magic, you often take lots of mulligans and lose due to screw / flood regardless of deckbuilding skills. That sucks. And that can be excluded from HL. It may well be that another mulligan is best for the format. One that is neither the standard one nor the spoils one. Playing with highlander cubes, our community agrees on the 'free-7' which is a good compromise. But I also think that the "dutch 7-6-6-5-5" or the like, posted above would be woorth a try. I don't think we need the spoils anymore. But it's wrong to say that new achievements in card pool matters legitimize a return to screw-flood times. Keep that in minnd.

@ banworthy cards:

I absolutely and totally agree that these three cards have no spot in highlander environments. They make parts of the format very uniformous and boring. To adapt the terminology used in the posts "If winning solely on the back of one card is what you like, Legacy is your format." The fact that they exist only once is in no way an argument to keep them. Why want a card that is, when it appears, clearly above regular power level?

Sure, none of rhe cards, win by themselves and they are ways to interact with them. But these ways are few and not acessible at all times for every deck. They have the potential to let a game fall to complete boredom in an instant. Like Jitte, Library of Alexandria, Survival or Tinker. (Praise the council for banning those) Get rid of them, I say. There is no argument for keeping them. A pretty and small banned list is nothing to desire if the cost is keeping cards like this! If it should turn out that the removal of those cards causes serious damage to the format, theres still time to consider.

[r4nd0m1]

Changes (of the BL) are bad in general imho.

The format is filled to the brim with powerful stuff. "Real" combodecks can be hated quite easily tho. Both TPS and Hermit have great trouble with a looong list of cards. my2c

[coldcrow]

One point raised by some irks me: The "random" wins of some cards. It is a singleton format, there will, per definition be, alot of randomness included. I could also raise a point where the "random" Garruk or Jace or Clique or [insert any swinging or situational spell] just wins a game, just needs some more turns.
I do not want to play a tamed format where I am still limited in my strategical options due to no 4 ofs but can't even play powerful effects. There will always be a next best card to ban.
If you do not like NO, play U/R/x control. I hear countering the thing is good and R/x gives lots of removal for their pressure.
I also do not get why there is this fetish about maximum card diversity. Every other format has its staples, even more so than singleton. It is like aces in poker, some cards will be best, no matter what.

/rant

[r4nd0m1]

(...) some cards will be best, no matter what.

/rant

Well said, dude! You made an excellent point that seems to have been forgotten or have never been realized in the first place by many.

That said, Im actually really glad that everyone is trying to make the bannedlist/rules better and point out problematic spots for the game and so on.

At the same time I feel like the policy behind it should be solid and consistent. Like, here are the rules, we made sure there is nothing totally broken in the game, now deal with it. A huge portion of Magic consists of hatecards and I dont feel like they get enough attention at all.

When action is needed, appropriate measures should be taken and we all are certainly glad about it.

Instead, Im more under the impression that many people feel like they should try and change the rules. Magic is a great game, whether you play Pauper, T2, limited or HL. If you dont have certain standards tho, it becomes a game for people who dont care too much I guess.

[LasH]

I also do not get why there is this fetish about maximum card diversity. Every other format has its staples, even more so than singleton. It is like aces in poker, some cards will be best, no matter what.
/rant

Each other format has a sidebord which hard counters heavy staples.

Maximum card diversity is what makes this format so different and fun (for me). Its one of the mainreasons for me to play it. If i want to play the same broken cards over and over again i would play T1. Cards like NO/SFM destroy a lot of decks and mechanics. So do the combo decks because the clock and randomnes of fast wins is to heavy.

I really do like Tabris deck previews each week. Honestly 50% are not playble in a tournament, but im sure the rate of playble lists would increase to at least 75% without these broken staples. Alot of the previews cant handle these cards. Mechanics get reduced to single cards (But there are a lot of interesting mechanics to build around but u dont because its easier to just play the staples). Stonforge is never bad (if you dont play a _very_ specific list including oath). Manadrain is never bad. You can always add these cards to any list in these colors no matter what your deck is aiming to do and have game winners without even thinking.

I would appreciate a rainbow meta like the previews. Imagine if each deck would be playble. Thats the way for me to go. But if the majority wants to hold status quo - and the discussion leads to that way, i'll accept. Thx for the replies

[r4nd0m1]

@LasH
Thats all semantics. Im convinced that 75% or more of the decks in Tabris videos are able to compete, if properly built.

Sure its annoying to see some staples time and time again, but I doubt you will find a format with more diversity than HL.

SFM is kinda weak to removal, NO is weak to counter and Mana Drain only ramps into gg like 50% or less imho. None of these cards should even be considered a ban - they are the bread and butter of the format. Same goes for Demonic and Top.

I guess, like coldcrow said before, its not the cards themselves, but the competitive nature of the format. People wanna win, so they play the best cards. Innovative players will find ways to exploit that tho, and thats how Id like to view it.