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April 1st, 2013 - Banned List Changes

Started by Maqi, 02-04-2013, 09:54:22 AM

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Maqi

Valid during April 15th, 2013 0:00 CET until October 14th, 2013 24:00 CET.

Changes to the present list, effective 04/15/2013:

Banned:

    * Shahrazad
    * Stoneforge Mystic

Unbanned:

    * -

Watchlist:

    * Demonic Tutor
    * Dread Return
    * Enlightened Tutor
    * Natural Order
    * Oath of Druids
    * Worldly Tutor
   
Unban-Watchlist:

    * Mystical Tutor
    * Tolarian Academy
    * Umezawa's Jitte

Single card Explanations:

Shahrazad

The Highlander format currently has ante and dexterity cards banned. Shahrazad belongs to neither of these categories, but the card has been recognized earlier back in 2007 by Wizard's Organized Play to be problematic both because of technical issues during tournament play (table space, round time) and from a rules point of view (no official errata received anymore due to card's cross-format ban status).
In addition Shahrazad also had some potential power level issues in this format, which however, are minor compared to the problems already mentioned above. In order to combat the card's effect and to mitigate the potential loss of round time, opponents could easily concede the subgame and return to the "real" game, but at that point the card was punishing with a rounded up loss of current life total. This kind of abuse was best observed in various WW based decks for which life totals and round time mattered less when paired up against combo or control. When Shahrazad is cast during the precombat mainphase with enough early threats on the board, it has the potential to be the best non-targeting player burn spell one could dream to have. Once back to the main game while still in the early game, one could then proceed to deliver the rest of the lethal damage with creatures.
So far in this format, we've seen the card making only two appearances, but based on those we concluded it has the risk to fulfill the same negative aspects described above, and we want to avoid those beforehand. Hence also the ban of the card without an initial entry to the watch list, which would be the normal procedure.

Stoneforge Mystic

Stoneforge Mystic has been a borderline card for a long time in the format, driving a larger part of the player base to demand its ban. This increased dramatically a year after, when Batterskull was printed. While we've heard you, we've also been collecting and analyzing tournament stats posted to mtgpulse.com over these couple of years to see what Stoneforge Mystic's impact on the format really has been, and whether it's removal could be warranted.
We noticed from the posted top-8 standings that the card continues to maintain its omnipresence, usually in various GWx builds which we see people playing more. Past quarter had only two tournaments in which the card did not reach the top-8.
Like with Tinker and Birthing Pod, Stoneforge Mystic is extra good in our format due to its combined abilities to tutor from a big deck and circumvent mana costs, fetching that best equipment for any given play situation, then a turn after cheat it into play with an added bonus to get around a counter, and finally have a ready body to carry the equipment. All these abilities combined made Stoneforge a very good card for a mere 1W mana investment.
Magic's trend during the last few years has been that a winning game strategy typically involves more board control, and that's something that Stoneforge can shift very well, with an early play leaving little chance to interact properly.
While the format has strategies and deck types that don't automatically lose to an early Stoneforge Mystic deployment, and the overall power level of the card doesn't automatically warrant its ban, we looked at the bigger picture in which the tournament results and community feedback led us to favor the option in which a format without Stoneforge Mystic will ultimately be better in the long run.

Demonic Tutor

Demonic Tutor was introduced last time to spark the discussion on the status of the tutors overall. We received some feedback. The majority of the respondents thought that the sorcery status and more common applications to find answers were enough to warrant its status in the format, despite its "splashability", and that the format needs to have that one good tutor which can't be played in other formats outside of Vintage. 
Black being the second least popular color in HL, the loss of Demonic would probably mean black will be seen even less. At the moment we haven't had a chance to gauge Demonic Tutor efficiently enough yet so this research continues.

Dread Return

While Hermit Druid combo attempts to build its presence in the format, Dread Return is added to the watchlist in order investigate if the free reanimation spell after activating the Druid is a disturbance for the format. Right now getting Hermit Druid combo activated requires battling through grave hate, creature removal and counterspells, all which can be found plenty in the format. Nothing in the top tournament deck results point out currently that the deck is a problem, but the potential speed of the deck, and whether that becomes a factor (a reliable combo kill) is put under observation.

Enlightened Tutor

When we unbanned Enlightened Tutor, we wanted to leave the card on the watchlist to track it no matter what the first results were going to be, and because we knew this would go to the majority of decks with white, which allows us efficiently to collect data on this. The evaluation is now ongoing and the results can be shared when the cycle is over. So far we've seen the Enlightned Tutor deployed more in control/combo builds as it gives more consistency to them. The applications to fetch mana hosers like Back to Basics have been few, with Winter Orb even less so.

Natural Order

Natural Order has been lately seen in the Rock, Junk and big Naya builds and then some Bants, all archetypes we don't consider problematic. Also the data from the last quarter shows that Natural order is not that widely played anymore, as top-8 appearances limit themselves to 7 tournaments only. We still feel that a 4 mana sorcery with additional cost is balanced, as the end result is still removable in theory with a large portion of spells. However, Natural Order stays on the list as its impact to game after resolving is still unknown.

Oath of Druids

Oath of Druids has occasionally a powerful effect, which with traditional builds brings Emrakul or some other game winning beast into play, but this hasn't always warranted a win since the board position then can already be in such a way that the opponent is just one turn away from winning via attacking with creatures, or it leaves the opponent some other window to react properly. However, since the last GP we saw a new approach in the winning deck, that enabled a consistent combo kill that was able to end the game right there after one turn. The deck is hard to pilot and we haven't seen it perform after the GP, but we're watchlisting the card largely due to power level reasons and to react faster if there's reason to.

Worldly Tutor

Worldly Tutor is in culmination of the tutor policy seeing where the line should be drawn. When we have taken a look at mtgpulse results from the last quarter, we can see only five tournaments where this card has been marked on top-8 eights. As the results are so slow, it will tell us either that

a) the card is not played as much as we thought
b) builds it has been used have not been successful

Knowing this, we continue to investigate in the coming months what the situation is.

Tolarian Academy

"The early game was the coin flip, the mid game was the mulligan, and the end game was the first turn."

-- Pro players at PT Rome, 1998

An era known as the "combo winter", Tolarian Academy played a pivotal role in Standard, often ending games as early as turn three, although turn 1 wins in mirror matches happened as well. In Highlander a turn three win with Academy is certainly a possibility, but it would require a very lucky hand of seven and virtually little to no interaction from opponent. This begs a question of how good Academy is nowadays?
Tolarian Academy made its first major entry on Highlander GP II, with winning 5C-Stax and the only two TPS decks making both to top-8, all three running Academy. After this Grand Prix III took place, this time with four copies of Academy (1x in TPS, 3x in Stax). Those same decks can be benchmarked even today to get a glimpse how good they could be, without Gifts Ungiven, Mana Vault and Balance obviously. So the two deck types that are expected to get most out of the card are Stax and pure combo, both which are not heavily presented in the format currently. This watchlisting now serves the purpose to find out, as the players have argued, whether Tolarian Academy's entry to the format would distort the meta, or serve merely as a very good card for the aforementioned archetypes.

Umezawa's Jitte

With Stoneforge Mystic gone, we decided to reintroduce Umezawa's Jitte on the watchlist. Jitte was banned close to 7 years ago with reasons that are still valid. But how well do they apply now that the power level of the decks has been risen? That's a question we are determined to find an answer for while testing. We remember well that a first drawn Jitte in the aggro mirror used to have a similar unnecessary luck factor impact as Library of Alexandria had in control mirrors. On the other hand Jitte is too slow against many non-creature combo and control builds for which attaining board control matters less.

Mystical Tutor

Mystical Tutor would no doubt have many decks to put this into, of which maybe UW-control would be one of the most potent. With this we're referring to the Miracle-factor, of which Entreat the Angels and Terminus are the most potent ones. Knowing this, our last time announcement on the card is still valid.


Other announcements:

Rounding of IE/CE card corners

Cards from International/Collectors Editions do not need to have their corners rounded anymore. If a player so chooses, he must ensure that there's no possibility to discern a IE/CE card from the back of the card (which usually means it has to be played in relatively new and opaque sleeves).

This change was made so that in the future there will be no need to damage your otherwise fine IE/CE cards (some of which have become quite expensive). Since sleeve products are enhanced in quality and variety (e.g. perfect fit sleeves) the rounding of corners doesn't seem necessary anymore.