Thoughts about the current HL-Situation

[Kristian]

Alternatively, an online league could be made testing free mulligan/regular mulligan.

[MMD]

Word. Nuff said, it's time to test this out now!

I will talk to the players of the next Highlander tournament in Bielefeld if we can change to the Free Mulligan rule for the tournament after the next, which will be on September 8th. In addition to that I will organize a "Magic Day" with my play group using Free Mulligan for our Highlander games.

Regarding the deck selection it will be crucial to find a more or less constant deck construction quality to evaluate the Mulligan impact properly. I will use current Highlander decks and will spy on the mana curve and land base from Modern (certainly also using my own HL experiences with the new mulligan in mind). These decks will certainly not be perfect but this is not necessary for the initial test objective IMO. The best benchmark would be possible if just one person will build all decks for a tournament, so we have a comparable "deck builder power level", but I don´t think it's mandatory.

I also don´t think there is a big difference in deck construction and game play if we choose Free or Paris mulligan for our test. I will ask them to note how many Paris mulligans have been "prevented" by the Free mulligan rule (but I have no clue to valuate that in the end) . Also we will verify if there are even some "tutor mulligans" possible with this rule.

Certainly some cards/combinations will be even stronger with Free mulligan as they are today (in comparison to the rest). I will also build a Hermit and an Oath deck to find out if they might get too powerful with the new mulligan.

Any suggestions for improvement of the mulligan benchmark?

[haju]

[...]
I also don´t think there is a big difference in deck construction and game play if we choose Free or Paris mulligan for our test. I will ask them to note how many Paris mulligans have been "prevented" by the Free mulligan rule (but I have no clue to valuate that in the end). Also we will verify if there are even some "tutor mulligans" possible with this rule.

Certainly some cards/combinations will be even stronger with Free mulligan as they are today (in comparison to the rest). I will also build a Hermit and an Oath deck to find out if they might get too powerful with the new mulligan.

Any suggestions for improvement of the mulligan benchmark?

If you want to change the mulligan I think the official one is the only right choice, as otherwise one could argue that there are decks using the one free mulligan to double their chances

Also "prevented" mulligans should not be a benchmark because it's not relevant (one must realize that the hands one starts with will be worse than the average hand one gets with the Spoils-Mulligan). In my opinion the only relevant benchmark is the balance between Aggro-, Combo- and Control-Decks. If no type of deck is preferred by the mulligan and there are more playable decks than now one can think about a change.

[W0lf]

I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.
Screw/flood would still be an issue but for competitive play some pregame preperation is needed otherwise the luck factor is just too high.

[pyyhttu]

I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.

It's an idea, but probably not; sideboard was not in the scope of this discussion.

Moreover for reasons, see faq#3: "Why is no Sideboard allowed?"

As for testing the new mulligan variant: The only way I see it to be thoroughly tested is through the same way as 2007: several months transition period so that úsers could try it out and while feedback is gathered.

[MMD]

If you want to change the mulligan I think the official one is the only right choice, as otherwise one could argue that there are decks using the one free mulligan to double their chances

How do you know the only right choice? I cannot say this without testing. As you said, there are a lot of opinions in this forum.   We should definitely test the Free mulligan as well, because this will be a compromise and sometimes you have to be diplomatic, especially when you see that the community poll is more or less divided.

I have no idea how to best possible benchmark Free mulligan in comparison to the official mulligan (together in one test). Any clues? In the end we also need to evaluate the outside game factor "non-official mulligan" as well.

In my opinion the only relevant benchmark is the balance between Aggro-, Combo- and Control-Decks. If no type of deck is preferred by the mulligan and there are more playable decks than now one can think about a change.

This is definitely not the only relevant one but certainly an important one . Game balance and fun is king which is hard to find out in a couple of games. But we can definitely see where it could go. The same with deck diversity. You will not find out if there are more competitive decks possible in just a view tournaments but you will get a fair understanding for it. In my opinion both should do well. Quite a lot of testing has to be done.

I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.
Screw/flood would still be an issue but for competitive play some pregame preperation is needed otherwise the luck factor is just too high.

Even though I would prefer Sideobards in HL (and reducing the deck size  ) I don´t think this is a good idea for this test. Neither the council nor the rest of the community wants this change at the moment, so why test it? This would just kill the mulligan test.

[Vazdru]

k, nough said - let's move on....

I offer a online tournament ([HLL]Season XIX) using free-mulligan, double-elimination, enlarged card-pool (+ cards from watchlist, Tolarian Academy + Mystical tutor)
with a minimum of 8 players up to max. 16 players
Season XIX will be parallel to the fun league XVIII

tournament stucture is according to Season XVII (differences in purple)

• plz read the standing order of [HLL]Season 19 closely before you drop your name here! if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask before registering
• season launches only if there are a minimum of 8 participants
• starting fee is EUR 5,55 or single magic-card (see below) and will be collected as soon as there are enough participants
• season starts at the beginning of August

Registration for season XIX
Surname / Name / Country / way to contact you (ICQ, MSN, FB, PM...)


Standing Order:


Modus:
Double-Elimination / Doppel-KO-System
Best-of-three
played online or real-life
One free Mulligan (draw 7) afterwards "Road to Paris"
enlarged card pool, cards on unban-watchlist are allowed to play

Fee / Startgebühr:
EUR 5,55 via banktransfer (reason for payment: Nickname on mp.org) OR
Single Magic Card (lowest price on https://www.magickartenmarkt.de/ EUR 5,00 same language/condition), mkm-screenshot + card via Mail
Registration is binding!
EUR 5,55 via Banküberweisung (Verwendungszweck: Nickname in diesem Forum) ODER
eine Einzelkarte, Mindestpreis auf MKM für Karte in gleichem Zustand / in gleicher Sprache EUR 5,00 - Karte zusammen mit mkm-Screenshot an mich  
Anmeldung ist verbindlich - also bitte vorher drüber nachdenken, ob man mitmachen möchte oder nicht.

Decklists:
No – after each round you are able to change / switch decks.
Nein – nach jeder Runde besteht die Möglichkeit, das Deck zu verändern bzw. zu tauschen.

Participants:
min. 8, max. 16

Seatings:
HLL Ladder Position on July 31st 2013
Players w/o rating in order of their registration.
Setzliste nach HLL Position zum 31. Juli 2013
Spieler ohne HLL Rating nach Eingang der Anmeldungen

Pricepool:
16 players: 24 Booster of standard-legal set
cards of pricepool are worth 2 Boosterpacks, winners may choose between cards or booster in order of their ranking
Bei 16 Spielern 24 Booster.
Preiskarten sind 2 Booster wert, die Sieger können in Reihenfolge des Ranking entscheiden, ob und wenn ja welche Karten sie nehmen oder sich für Booster entscheiden

Division / Verteilung:
1st: 50%
2nd: 25%
3rd: 15%
4th: 10%
+/- 1 Booster (rounding)

examples
16 players:
1st: 12 Booster
2nd: 6 Booster
3rd: 4 Booster
4th: 2 Booster

HLL K-Value:
16

Reports:
Winner has to post a short summary or post a vid.
reports have to include:
* which decks have been played
* landcount of your deck (the decks)
* any rather how many mulligans at the beginning, interesting or lame games
furthermore i wan't to gather any feedback concerning the influence by changing mulligan rather the free mulligan itself

Der Sieger muss einen kurzen Bericht schreiben oder ein video des Spiels posten.
der Report muss beinhalten:
* welche Decks wurden gespielt
* wieviele Länder hat das Siegerdeck (bzw. haben die Decks) gespielt
* ob und wenn ja wie viele Mulligans wurden zu Beginn genommen, wie hat sich das Spiel entwickelt: spannend oder langweilig
darüber hinaus möchte ich möglichst viel Feedback zum Einfluss des geänderten Mulligans bzw. zum free-mulligan selbst

Byes:
If there are 9-15 players there will be some 1st-round byes for the top seeded players and in the consolation round some for first round loosers  - see example structure season XVII:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At-ahxh_VoQPdDBxVExJZG0yRHZYQkExZEtOaktsc1E&authkey=COHGnbsD&hl=en&authkey=COHGnbsD#gid=3


Bei einer Spielerzahl von 9 bis 15 gibt es Byes für die topgesetzten Spieler und auch in der Trostrunde für Verlierer der ersten Runde – schaut euch hierzu am besten das Tableau der Season XVII an.

Time-Table / Zeitplan:
Bascically Gameday Sunday 7 pm
The players are free to schedule a different date.
Matches have to be played within 2 weeks. If there are no match in this time, the guy who is rdy to play on following Gameday (7 pm) advance to next round.
Each player has the possibility to announce a (max. 2 week) vacation.
Sheduled matches can be played anytime.
Grundsätzlich ist der Sonntag, um 19.00 Uhr der Spieltermin.
Die Spieler können allerdings frei einen anderen Termin vereinbaren.
Die Spiele müssen innerhalb von 2 Wochen ausgetragen werden, wenn die zwei Wochen verstrichen sind, kommt derjenige Spieler als Gewinner in die nächste Runde, der am folgenden Gameday um 19.00 Uhr online ist.
Angesetzte Partien können jederzeit ausgetragen werden.

for those who would like to participate season XIX and who are willing to give some feedback:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=939.msg9202#new

[phyrexianblackmetal]

I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.
Screw/flood would still be an issue but for competitive play some pregame preperation is needed otherwise the luck factor is just too high.

Even though I would prefer Sideobards in HL (and reducing the deck size  ) I don´t think this is a good idea for this test. Neither the council nor the rest of the community wants this change at the moment, so why test it? This would just kill the mulligan test.

Although testing Sideboards now would not be a good idea, I think allowing sideboards might be a good compromise if the mulligan rule gets changed. It would be a great way to reduce the randomness factor caused by the regular/free mulligan and would diversify card choices, allowing cards that are usually too bad for inclusion into the deck to exist in the sideboard. I don't think reducing the deck size would be good though. The 100-card-rule makes the format more unique and also makes more diverse builds of the same deck type possible.

[Tiggupiru]

Adding sideboards would, in my opinion, just increase randomness. "Looks like I drew two of my sideboarded superhosers. Guess you lose."

Bad matchups are part of Magic you can't run from. You need to figure out the bad matchups for your deck before the tournament and then make a decision based on that. If you feel you have a bad matchups against the most commonly played decks, you really shouldn't play that deck.

Even though spoils alleviates the bad matchup a little, it does the same for your opponent. If you are the more consistent deck, it's actually more beneficial to you if there is no spoils. As they can just draw a couple of bad hands to give yourself a shot against even in an abysmal MU. If both decks work optimally, you are always the clear underdog. And even if you have two or three trump cards in a MU that's bad and spoils help you find those, it's totally random and non-interactive style to win. Again making the play skill matter less.

I also like the idea of testing, but one tournament isn't nearly enough to give pointers. It's going to be a long road to figure out what the best decks and the best land vs. spell - ratio is. I am not trying to dismiss the results, but all participants and number crunchers should try to keep that in mind.

[Vazdru]

Adding sideboards would, in my opinion, just increase randomness. "Looks like I drew two of my sideboarded superhosers. Guess you lose."

+1

[MMD]

Sideboard
I do not see that problem at all. IMO a sideboard is another strategic angle for the game. Sure, there will be a lot of matchup specific cards (some of them hosers) in the sideboard but this is a strategic advantage as you have a chance to improve bad matchups with a good sideboard plan. So what are those superhosers? I mean we currently play with Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Humility and a lot of other cards in the maindeck with nearly no anti-hate available and we are more or less fine with that.

100 card deck
If we want it unique and diverse we could play 85+15, just for example. There would be more space for spells to play and we would have fewer problems with searching and shuffling due to the reduced deck size.

However, I recommend starting with the mulligan question and improve other rules later   

[Vazdru]

Sideboarding makes mono-colored decks obv. weaker. Every Bant runs c.o.p.: Red which is usualy gg vs Mono-Red.

Not to mention that in matchups like RDW vs WW sideboarding is pretty sick. Absolute Law, Kor Firewalker + CoP faces Anarchy and Flashfires ? Noone can really want such games which were decided only by pure randomness.

[MMD]

How can a HL sideboard be much different to any other constructed format except that you have a lower probability to draw them? Color hate will quite often be too specific, blocking slots for more flexible cards. How good is a CoP Red against WW, or even Boros/Gruul/Naya? The slot is better occupied with a good lifegain creature.  Mono sideboards are weaker as a matter of fact. No difference to other formats.

OK, I will shut up here and build decks for testing the new mulligan... 

[Nastaboi]

My main consern about sideboards was that people could not possibly figure out which seven or eight cards to take out in a reasonable time frame. New rules changes would make it a bit easier, as you can just add cards and not necessarily take the same number out, but as a judge I would find it really hard to enforce 3-minute sideboarding rule in Highlander.

[MMD]

Everyone should have a sideboard plan for each matchup before the tournament (which is mandatory to build a good sideboard at all, btw). Just finding these predetermined cards will take a little longer. Unfortunately real life is different.

To sum it up, if everybody would randomize their decks properly and has a sideboard plan for every matchup we could immediately implement the official mulligan and a sideboard