Watchlist changes July 1st, 2013

[Vazdru]

Valid during July 1st, 2013 0:00 CET until October 14th, 2013 24:00 CET.

Changes to the present list, effective 7/15/2013:

Watchlist:

    * Natural Order
    * Oath of Druids

Unban-Watchlist:

    * Tolarian Academy
    * Mystical Tutor

Other Announcement:

Mulligan:

Current "spoils-mulligan" (also known as "poker-mulligan") has been a subject of a discussion lately, namely in these threads:

Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
The Spoils-Mulligan Problem
Banlist changes I. of 2013

Main arguments gathered from the feedback have been:

1. With spoils-mulligan interaction starts earlier and games are decided more often on the first turns, making the format too fast
2. Aggro benefits from spoils more by being able to aggressively "curve out" whereas combo/control can't establish in same efficiency with answers their fundamental turn
3. Mulligan is exploited solely for mana-fixing by lowering the amount of lands in a build, and as a standard strategy "deep mulligan" is then used
4. Designing mana bases requires currently little to no thinking, as restrictions set by color wheel don't apply due to mulligan mana-fixing in place; people can play in Bant Eternal Witness as well as Cryptic command with ease
5. Spoils-mulligan is no longer needed as available mana producing lands printed since 2007 is sufficient now
6. Spoils mulligan is not in line with official DCI-rules making the tournaments "non-sanctionable" and harder for new players to enter

The original spoils-mulligan was borrowed back in 2007 from the same name card game to improve the old mulligan rule to make Highlander games more interactive and address the "mana screw & flood" issues, which were observed to be more common in Highlander due to larger deck sizes (see: faq #12). This was the main motivation for the new mulligan as the games were viewed to be decided by a random chance caused by an outdated mechanic rather than any real interaction or play choices happening. In time this was viewed also to result in more card variety and deck diversity.

This was also ultimately the viewpoint of the council in which we looked at the big picture of pros and cons (spoils mulligan vs. regular paris mulligan) and though not unanimously, we decided to keep the current spoils mulligan without a need to open a trial for the regular mulligan at this point (as was the case with 3 month transition period in 2007). We viewed that the mana flood/screw happening is such a turnover for the game, that minimizing it for HL-format is a benefit outweighing the above points.

However, this does not mean that the verdict is final for mulligan as we're constantly monitoring the state of the game. This said, we encourage players to test the format in local tournament play with regular paris mulligan, and we'd appreciate if you can then report back to forums the findings whether regular mulligan compared to spoils improved the play experience.