Banlist changes I. of 2013

[Doks]

Hi all.


Here are the current changes to the Highlander banlist.

My thoughts on certain decisions.


I. Stoneforge Mystic banned

Well, this one was a controversial discussion over months now. In the end, I pretty much agree with the ban. I for myself don't really play creature based decks. But even as a dedicated control player, Stoneforge Mystic was a staple in my builds just for the random Turn 2 win against aggressive decks that didn't manage to handle it in time. I had this one experience at the HL GP in Iserlohn two or three years ago, where I won a counterwar about an enemy Stoneforge Mystic and then slammed down my own for the win. This one silly card forces you to spend so many resources on handling it that I'm sure its banning will reduce the amount of random wins provided by sheer power.

II. Demonic Tutor still watchlisted

In my experience, this card is still used for defensive purposes in most cases, especially in the early game. I understand that having a tutor effect for any card in your deck is somewhat odd when you look at the nature of a singleton format. On the other hand, what else does black have to offer? Almost nobody runs Black as a main colour, and that for a good reason: it's not known for a wide variety of good cards. It's almost always just used as a support colour and I predict that it wouldn't even be splashed to support if there wasn't Demonic Tutor. Vindicate, CC1 discards, Pernicious Deed, Lingering Souls, Mystical Teachings etc. are all nice and sweet, but if it wasn't for Demonic Tutor, people would think twice before splashing black. It's more like the tutor more or less brings other splash goodies to the party that otherwise wouldn't be considered.

III. Mystical Tutor unban watchlisted

Yes, unbanning that card could be really dangerous, EoT going for Entreat the Angels is pretty ridicoulus. However, as long as there is its green pendant in the format, this one should be free to play, too. "Either both or none" is my philosophy.


What do you think?


Best regards,

Doks

[MMD]

Well done - so far.

Stoneforge Mystic
...was most probably not overpowered for our format but too many decks centered their strategy and plays around this little Squire which made HL a little boring to me. I am fine with the council's decision and can understand the reasons behind it and look forward to a shifting metagame.

Oath of Druids - Demonic Tutor - Enlightened Tutor
...but I am unsatisfied that we are still allowed to combine these three very powerful cards and hope that this will not lead to an "Oath Summer" or even worser "Combo Oath Summer". As long as they pack "fair" creatures such as e.g. Primeval Titan into their decks I am more or less fine as they will still loose against most hyper aggro builds with that but I am still frightend that a list similar to the winning combo Oath lists will be constant enough to play all these hate cards against counter decks and still be faster than many aggro decks.

Worldly Tutor
...is still very strong but with Stoneforge Mystic gone Wordly also lost its main target. As long as Hermit will not be Tier one this card is very borderline but I will not wine that it is allowed.

Mystical Tutor
I also hope that you will never touch the Mystical Tutor again to enable Miracle to go over the top (and strengthen combos as well).  

I think I am ok with the other watch list decisions and won´t mind to test Academy and Jitte. Both explanations seem valid to me.

Keep up the good work and see you in Hanau on the 20th! Don´t forget to cut the Mystic from your Trial lists  

[LasH]

Thank you for banning SFM. 2 years to late but still the right decission. I really appreciate this.

All cards listed are reasonable for discussion. I only want to comment tolarian academy.

TA doesnt work in a format with Intuition/LFtl/Mind over matter/candelabras and deserted temple. I did about 100 testgames with TA and these cards break it.

I really want to see academy in the format bc it would push my favorite deck back to the playable but it should not be abusable. Think about how many cards can search candelabras atm (trinket mage/artificers intuition/ enlightend etcetcetc - the list is to long exspecially since stax/combo can run all tutors).

I tested ALOT with this card (posted years ago alrdy) and my final conclusion is: Unban academy only if u ban MoM, Candelabras AND deserted temple and u dont have a totally broken card which will bring back stax at least. Lflt needs also be considered as ban again or intuition.

Imagine Intuition on LFTL deserted + academy. Its really broken since u get so many mana...If you ban the mentioned cards u get a cradle for an artifact theme deck which is ok.

Since i think u want to have a "banlist as short as possible" (i will never get that) i dont see academy doing good in this format.

[Madsam]

Jitte and Acedemy on Watchlist? Are you mad?
Jitte wins games if not handled, naya would be so happy to play this thing, especially in combination with boros reconer, not to mention it is also incredibly stong the first time it connects it's close to gg.
Artifact Highlanders currently are everywhere on cockatrice, already quite strong, but giving them academy?
Both cards shouldn't be unbanned, and I hope it stays this way.

I'm really unhappy that you didn't ban oath. Hopefully the next GP shows you the strenghth of this card.

The sfm ban is ok, I didn't play him for 3 months, and see him rarer than before in online play.

[pyyhttu]

TA doesnt work in a format with Intuition/LFtl/Mind over matter/candelabras and deserted temple. I did about 100 testgames with TA and these cards break it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Can we have the decklist you conducted these tests with, please?

[LasH]

No but maybe payron has the list.

(http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=586.45)

Testings were 2 years ago and i dont remember my "real" deck list.

[SirGalahad]

For me, Stoneforge never was too strong, but i have no certain problems with this ban. I especially like it for the Unban-Watchlist addition of Jitte, which i always didn't like being banned.
I am in fear of Academy being too strong, but i like it being on the list for bigger testing. Maybe in the current format it isn't the beast it used to be.
But Mystical is so strong at the moment with the rise of Combo and Control, i don't think it would be healthy for the format.
For the last point, i would have liked Mana Drain being added to the Watchlist, but i can understand the arguments for it being not on the list.

Thanks to the council for all the work.

[cron]

Well done.

Keep up the good work!

[Tiggupiru]

Didn't think Stoneforge needed to be banned, but then again it didn't actually bring anything to the format, so I don't think of it as a huge loss.

I was hoping to see more discussion about those tutors and to incite that I kinda wanted to see Vampiric Tutor in the watchlist just to see public's reaction. Then again, maybe seeing what players think about Mystical will keep the angry mob from raising too many pitchforks first is a good idea.

My personal opinion is that Mystical is not going to cause problems. The format isn't too fast to negate the card advantage from the top-deck tutors and Miracle cards are only good in control decks that are pretty bad right now. Cheap wrath is pretty good, but not devastating. Entreat is a finisher in an UWx-control, so I don't see a problem here. Bonfire is good, but URx control/aggro-control is not a top tier deck, so giving boost to those archetypes is more than fine in my book. Besides, you can just draw these cards on your hand before having the perfect opportunity to cast them, so they have their fair share of drawbacks. The rest of the miracles are just unplayable. I don't mind Mystical giving combo a boost either. It would be nice to see an actual good and consistent combo to shake the meta a little.

Jitte should be tested, but I have a feeling that it generates too many problems.

Tolarian Academy makes really fun combo-decks, so I don't mind seeing it unbanned. =)

None of the cards that are on the ban-watchlist needs to be banned in my opinion (with the possible exception of the Demonic). Oath is the most frightening of them, but when you build a deck with Oath, you need to give up on LOT good value creatures, so it balances itself out somewhat and generates totally different kind of archetypes. Metagame can also evolve to fight Oath. Just add more burn spells to your aggro-deck in place of creatures, or maybe add more Ronom Unicorns and War Priest of Thunes.

Demonic might just be too powerful for it's own good. I honestly think all the tutors on the banned list and on the format are totally fine as long as you reflect their powerlevel to Demonic. It would be sweet to get a clear line as to how powerful tutors should be allowed see play.

[coldcrow]

Yup unban mystical and TA and while you are at it, vamp, at the same time
That can only end very well.
Not that I wouldn't dislike it.

[pyyhttu]

Yup unban mystical and TA and while you are at it, vamp, at the same time
That can only end very well.

Looking at past unbannings and their reasonings, it would seem improbable both Tolarian Academy and Mystical Tutor to enter the format at the same time. Just saying.

Yawgmoth's Will and LED entered the format gradually too, and neither of them have been observed to be busted during the first 6 months in this format, even together.

[LasH]

Yawgmoth's Will and LED entered the format gradually too, and neither of them have been observed to be busted during the first 6 months in this format, even together.

I have some other questions pyyhttu:

1) If u consider brining all this stuff back how about LoA? I mean you consider jitte which can totally random win most of the games. The format is faster than ever so how is the impact of LoA? I kinda think your unban-watchlist has a deeper impact.

2) Futhermore since there is no statement about the hl-mulligan. If you alrdy change rules for this format can we bring back damage on the stack? Lots of creatures would have a nice comeback and the cardpool would increase (thats a thing all ppl want?). I miss Mogg Fanatic.

[pyyhttu]

If u consider brining all this stuff back how about LoA? I mean you consider jitte which can totally random win most of the games.

Lots of games in HL are decided by board presence nowadays. We knew this but watchlisted Jitte anyway. Because since Stoneforge left, and it has been quite some since Jitte has been in the format, we figured now could be the time to look if Jitte is as busted as it used to be. I haven't yet properly tested the card, but on paper it looks as strong as it used to be, decisively so in aggro vs. aggro matchups. If Jitte turns out to be similar in effect as Library of Alexandria was, of which we have fresh data (while it was in the format), then I'd say it's better for Jitte to stay out. But we'll see.

Do test the card out and report back how it was. I recommend stuffing the card in this 42 player tournament winning build: http://mtgpulse.com/event/12372#173214 (lots of evasion and 1-drops in that one, so Jitte should strike gold in an opener).

Futhermore since there is no statement about the hl-mulligan. If you alrdy change rules for this format can we bring back damage on the stack? Lots of creatures would have a nice comeback and the cardpool would increase (thats a thing all ppl want?).

About combat damage on stack: Times change and game development is a fact, even with as an old game as Magic. And now that current card design in general is done with these rules in mind, you can't go back anymore. And even if you did just because of some lost nostalgic Mogg Fanatic, you'd introduce some side effects with new creatures...

About mulligan and rules in general: There wasn't a statement about mulligan, yeah, but reason is that we didn't have anything to announce yet (maybe we should've announce just that). These things take time and we want to do it properly.

On a personal note: I don't advocate changing rules for a subset of a format, and while I was a big fan of the spoils-mulligan, I think it is not necessarily needed anymore and returning to old paris would be more beneficial at this point (would slow down the format and _maybe_ alleviate the greedy mana costs you can now play in certain builds). Original spoils-mulligan was devised to combat non-interactive mana screws (partly also due to lack of proper shuffling which was more probable with big decks), but I think the mulligan is nowadays abused more in scaling down manabases (see Patrick Richter's last GP 4C manabase), or constructing 1-2-3 curves in aggro.

And if we look back at Frank's original vision, which was to streamline the different highlander formats under one set of rules, the way I see it, that would include playing the game with its official DCI rules as much as possible. That's pretty much the reason why we banned Shahrazad too.

[Cadaj]

Lots of games in HL are decided by board presence nowadays. We knew this but watchlisted Jitte anyway. Because since Stoneforge left, and it has been quite some since Jitte has been in the format, we figured now could be the time to look if Jitte is as busted as it used to be. I haven't yet properly tested the card, but on paper it looks as strong as it used to be, decisively so in aggro vs. aggro matchups. If Jitte turns out to be similar in effect as Library of Alexandria was, of which we have fresh data (while it was in the format), then I'd say it's better for Jitte to stay out. But we'll see.

Jitte would be more balanced WITH Stoneforge Mystic in the format than without it. As you typically have 5-6 ways to tutor answers, not having (Creature Tutor into) Stoneforge Mystic into Jitte as 3-4 of them (in a typical deck) would lower ist to 2-3. Redundancy of cards is a bad thing in HL normally i think, but in this case it balances out Jitte better, than having it without SFM.

I personally love the card (Jitte) but i think its not good for the format on its own.

Also people need to stop freaking out about cards on the watchlist.
Yes some of those cards could be fucking good, but i dont want to be battling with 2/2 vanilla bears all day, which will happen if we ban all the "op" cards.

[LasH]

If Jitte turns out to be similar in effect as Library of Alexandria was, of which we have fresh data (while it was in the format), then I'd say it's better for Jitte to stay out. But we'll see.

Thx for the answer i agree on your statement. But not on this part.

In times of LoA there were more control decks around (they even won the GP - Mono Blue Jochen Frenster as far as i remember). After that ban they dissapeard and the GWx staples made their turn.

I still think the mainproblem for LoA was still Intuition/Gifts + Lftl at the same time bc it enabled it by itself. I would love to see tests for LoA without Lftl in this format.

But lftl will make all broken lands problematic with intuition around. Same for Acadamy.