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Community Poll regarding the mulligan

Started by Tabris, 07-03-2014, 02:14:16 AM

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Which mulligan do you prefer?

Spoils Mulligan
36 (42.4%)
Free Mulligan
49 (57.6%)

Total Members Voted: 79

r4nd0m1

#15
Hi all, please stick to the topic!  :-\

Personally, Im a huge fan of the spoils mulligan but Ive come to see the advantages of the free mulligan now too, so..

the deciding factor for me is the fact that the "draws" have become way worse.

Id say, when I lose a game now, roughly 1/3 of the time I lose because of screw, flood or simply because of having no good options, while the game still takes some time to finish.

That means lots of wasted time, instead of actually playing the game.

The mulligan is a very important factor in the game and I hope this discussion will be solved soon.  :)

Regards, Kurt Kofler


[sarcasm] Maybe someone could provide some empirical facts? Like, compare the 3 recent cup result for starters.. oh wait, ChristophO will start semantics with you. Well, Im sure the council has done the research already anyways, right?  ::) ::)[/sarcasm]





Jack Sabbath

#16
Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:22:00 AM

You also still have not acknowlegded  that Gunnar played a combo not a control deck.


Zombify + Fattie in Graveyard is not combo. Neither is Llanowar Elf + Natural Order..


Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:22:00 AM

If you only had mislabeled a deck that would be no problem. But you have deliberatedly made the free-mull tournament look bad with your "statistics".


Well, according to my definition Naya is such a Greedy problem deck that everyone complained about. And no, I did not fake anything to make the meta look bad. If the pure statistics gives you the impression that it is bad then this might be the case! The first and second place even played the exact same deck! Yay! Netdecks in highlander!
I presented the meta and categorized the decks accoring to my interpretation. Yes, decks that just picks the best aggro or midrange decks of X colors and play almost only non-basics are the same category. Midrange decks are usually also aggro decks, they just abuse their acceleration more (2nd round smiter or something). I also categorized Patrick Richters BUGw Aggro as such a deck in GP XI.

People also argued that I put MonoR and MonoW into one category. The same with UW and UR, where the strategy is much more distinct - one plays combos like Sword Foundry and the other one tries to apply preasure with burn.
I just grouped decks that have things in common. I never said that they have the same archetype!
However I think it's pretty arbitrary that you complain about badly categorized decks in the new GP and not in the old ones.

I picked the 3 most representative tournaments that have been. And the Hanau GPs are the biggest one by far! You think random FNMs would be more representative?
By still - how do you justify that the effect that the free mulligan should bring is realized? Can you support it with facts?

Of course we could wait for the next GP. Maybe it will look better.


----------

Now I want to talk about my personal impression as a player - the council officially exists to keep the format as healthy as possible. In my eyes that failed. I supported my impression already with facts. If the meta would have improved, then I would like the new mulligan. But it ceases the meta PLUS it makes the games more luck dependend to opening hands.

ChristophO


UB Reanimator is an A+B Combo Deck :

A Pieces (Fatty that will win the game):
Angel of Despair
Ashen Rider
Bogardan Hellkite
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Enclave Cryptologist
Flayer of the Hatebound
Griselbrand
Inkwell Leviathan
It That Betrays
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Necrotic Ooze
Pathrazer of Ulamog
Phyrexian Devourer
Primeval Titan
Sheoldred, Whispering One
Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Sundering Titan
Terastodon
Woodfall Primus

B Pieces (cheat A into play):
Corpse Dance
Beacon of Unrest
Demonic Tutor
Exhume
Life // Death (Life)
Living Death
Reanimate
Show and Tell
Victimize
Vigor Mortis
Zombify
Quicksilver Amulet
Animate Dead
Dance of the Dead
Diabolic Servitude
Necromancy
Recurring Nightmare

The rest of the deck is tutoring and looting effects to put A pieces into the yard and find B Pieces.

---------------------

Free-Mull

1)
Also, the main reason the mulligan was changed to the free-mull was to diminish the amount of games with perfect curves making the construction of a good mana curve in your deck more important and to slow down the games a little bit.

For this you  have to acutally play since deck lists will not be a good metric. I feel this goal has been achieved.

2)
A secondary reason was to stop the 5c Aggro decks.

Quote
   

         GP XIII      GP XIII      GP XIII      GP XII      GP XII      GP XII   
   ARCHETYPE      Appearance      TOP 8      TOP 16      Appearance      TOP 8      TOP 16   
   5C-Aggro                        8      1      1   
   
   

 


Jack Sabbath

#18
Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 10:24:19 AM

UB Reanimator is an A+B Combo Deck :

...


I hope you will point out in the next post how Signets + Wildfire are a combo. I'll ignore this reanimator topic from now on.



Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 10:24:19 AM

Free-Mull

1)
Also, the main reason the mulligan was changed to the free-mull was to diminish the amount of games with perfect curves making the construction of a good mana curve in your deck more important and to slow down the games a little bit.

For this you  have to acutally play since deck lists will not be a good metric. I feel this goal has been achieved.

2)
A secondary reason was to stop the 5c Aggro decks.

Quote
   

         GP XIII      GP XIII      GP XIII      GP XII      GP XII      GP XII   
   ARCHETYPE      Appearance      TOP 8      TOP 16      Appearance      TOP 8      TOP 16   
   5C-Aggro                        8      1      1   
   
   



I personally hate the first goal, because it makes games less interesting and less fun. Now games will be lot because a player missed his critical two drop, although he plays 15 of them.. so we can play only deck with no crucial slots and this could be the exact reason why UR and Greed Aggro are so strong.

The appearance of 5C Aggro - Of course.. the almight 5 Color aggro... What's wrong with this Archetype?
8 Decks in 101 players is not too much and 1 of them making top 8 and top 16 is just an average value - it indicates that this deck has perfect average strength. So why do you want to nerf it? And why do you consider 4 Color Greed decks less problematic than on 5 color? It loses to the same things and has the same strenghs. But this time 4 Color seems to be a clear deck to beat. How many decks with Christian Hauck's exact 4C blood list participated and how many reached the Top 2?
You're not hating BUG Oath even though Jonny Al-Saidi won the GP with it. We could also randomly hate Scapeshift. It's not a problem for the format at all, but neither was 5-Color. So yeah, let's just hate Scapeshift!

edit: By the way - I think the statistics you provided on the 5-Color aggro appearance would also be interesting for other Archetypes. Would it be possible to create it?

ChristophO

#19
Because of curve reasons Aggro decks need to play a low curve (many one and two drops). If one decides to build an HL aggro deck from scratch you will quickly notice that there are not that many quality cmc1 creatures around. Because of the spoils mulligan fixing the mana problems 5c (and 4c aggro as well) were taking up a very big share of the Aggro decks making other multicolor aggro decks more of a budget choice. The extent in which this happened is of course debatable. Please note that RDW has been and still is a T1 deck because the reach (burn) of the deck is so plentiful and there are also quite a few hoser cards (PoP, Moon, Ankh etc.).

To avoid mana problems the 4c decks now need to put a bigger focus on fixing it and play a slower Midrange game to avoid having uncastable cards in hand that need be played early like Wild Nacatl. How has the use of Wild Nacatl changed in those decks. Nacatl is the best Aggro creature printed so far in the history of magic. However the 4C Blood decks of GP 13 do not play it. They can not support the colore requirements of the card that early in the games where Nacatl is best and instead decided to build a slower Midrange deck. The Naya Zoo deck (which does not have to support black) plays the Nacatl. With the spoils mulligan rules you would also have to justify why to not just play a 4c Blood Aggro list like Maqi (3rd place Gp 12) or even a 5c Aggro list. Please note I do not feel the 5c Aggro was too strong but rather limited deck building choices in the Aggro shard too much while the spoils mulligan pushed HL gameplay twoards fast-paced aggro centric game play.

A midrange deck has more options for 4cmc and 3cmc cards. Generally, decks play more cards with cmc 1 than they do with cmc 4, but WotC does not print a bigger amount of 1cmc cards (that are playable in HL) than they do 4cmc cards. I would rather claim there are more new Chandra, Pyromaster/Jace/.... cards than there are Voice of Resurgence/Nacatl/Kird Ape etc., just because they so rarely do mythic cards with a low cmc (and sadly mythics tend to have a high powerlevel). So I believe it is much easier for 4c Midrange decks to be of different flavours (and card choices) than it would be for the Aggro decks.

I also feel that the 4c Blood Midrange deck is slow enough to have problems against Staxx and even slower controlish decks. Especially because the free-mull will make it so, that the midrange decks can not curve out as nicely as before. This of course will have to be seen. I actually will play a BO5 with my Staxx deck against Hitman (who placed second in the Gp 13) with 4C Blood for the ladder tournament. Feel free to participate in those leagues in the future, they are a lot of fun. Please also note that Hitman did not have good 4-0 finishes in his local "FNM" tournaments with 4C Blood so the deck seems to be in line. It just was an often played and copied deck in GP 13, because people made conservative deck choices because of the mulligan change 3 months before. The three trials before GP 13 on site in Frankfurt were won by RDW, Staxx and a midrangey Multicolor deck I think.  

Edith:
Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 09-03-2014, 11:05:53 AM

By the way - I think the statistics you provided on the 5-Color aggro appearance would also be interesting for other Archetypes. Would it be possible to create it?

Yes, ofc. Vazdru already did:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=976.0

There was also quite a bit of discussion about it here:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=979.0


phyrexianblackmetal

First of all, I want to say that I think it's wrong to call 3-color decks "greedy". I mean what do you want, a meta where only 1-2-color decks exist? 3 colors to me are right at the edge, providing a nice middle ground between the "greedy" decks and the balanced 1- and 2-color decks.

Second, as was said before, one tournament result, especially one that came so soon after the change, can hardly be considered solid proof for an unhealthy meta. I think the meta is quite healthy right now. Look at the Top 8 of the last larger Highlander tournament in Leipzig for example: http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/16039#224955 This Top 8 consists of a wide range of color combinations and strategies (1 1c, 2 2c, 2 3c, 1 4c, 2 5c; 4 Aggro, 1 Aggro-Control, 1 Midrange, 2 Control), which I would consider quite healthy and diverse. I don't know how it is in other cities, but at least the Berlin Meta is still equally healthy and diverse too in my opinion. No, the Free Mulligan hasn't completely crushed the "greedy" 4- and 5c decks, but that's a good thing, as those decks fading completely into obscurity wouldn't have benefited deck diversity either. It has however made them considerably less greedy. Compared to similar lists from the times of the Spoil Mulligan, the 4- and 5c Decks nowadays play more lands and less cards with 2 or more mana symbols of a single color in their costs. 4c Blood by far isn't as dominant anymore as it was in Hanau either. In fact, I've seen quite a few homebrews that might be considered niche decks rise up and thrive in the last couple of weeks in my local meta. People also seem to get more creative with some of their cardchoices. Thomas Hollbach's 5c-Deck from Leipzig played a Werebear for example. When was the last time you saw one of these in a competitive deck?

I think the Free Mulligan is judged unfairly negative by many people. I won't stop playing, no matter what mulligan wins out, but I have to say that I quite like the current meta and wouldn't want to see it possibly disappear with the reintroduction of the Spoils Mulligan.

Jack Sabbath

Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 09-03-2014, 02:57:40 PM

Second, as was said before, one tournament result, especially one that came so soon after the change, can hardly be considered solid proof for an unhealthy meta. I think the meta is quite healthy right now. Look at the Top 8 of the last larger Highlander tournament in Leipzig for example: http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/16039#224955


I think Leipzigs tournament is not representative for this meta, because it had only 31 players and therefore much less competiton.
Comparing a 31 player tournament to a tourament with 131 players is like comparing a tournament with 131 players to one with 500 players or an 8 player Tournament to a 31 player tournament. The difference is huge.

Due to the lowered competition also bad decks can reach the top 8 due to variance reasons. As an example Benjamin Jeschke reached the top 8 with UB control. I'm not totally sure but I think he never plays Highlander (-> doesn't know the meta) and just built a deck for this tournament.



Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
Because of curve reasons Aggro decks need to play a low curve (many one and two drops). If one decides to build an HL aggro deck from scratch you will quickly notice that there are not that many quality cmc1 creatures around. Because of the spoils mulligan fixing the mana problems 5c (and 4c aggro as well) were taking up a very big share of the Aggro decks making other multicolor aggro decks more of a budget choice. The extent in which this happened is of course debatable. Please note that RDW has been and still is a T1 deck because the reach (burn) of the deck is so plentiful and there are also quite a few hoser cards (PoP, Moon, Ankh etc.).

I disagree on that. It's absolutely not true that decks with fewer colors have been only a budget choice. You can see that WW and RDW reached GP XI top 8, which means that it was fairly competitive as well. And there have also been enough 3 colored decks, which Vazdrus table shows.
I also think that there are enough quality CC1 creatures. But sure, it's your opinion and an opinion is never wrong.


Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
To avoid mana problems the 4c decks now need to put a bigger focus on fixing it and play a slower Midrange game to avoid having uncastable cards in hand that need be played early like Wild Nacatl. How has the use of Wild Nacatl changed in those decks. Nacatl is the best Aggro creature printed so far in the history of magic. However the 4C Blood decks of GP 13 do not play it. They can not support the colore requirements of the card that early in the games where Nacatl is best and instead decided to build a slower Midrange deck. The Naya Zoo deck (which does not have to support black) plays the Nacatl. With the spoils mulligan rules you would also have to justify why to not just play a 4c Blood Aggro list like Maqi (3rd place Gp 12) or even a 5c Aggro list. Please note I do not feel the 5c Aggro was too strong but rather limited deck building choices in the Aggro shard too much while the spoils mulligan pushed HL gameplay twoards fast-paced aggro centric game play.

The key word is that you feel, that the spoils mulligan took freedom in deck building. I feel the opposite. Whenever I build a deck today I'm noticing that its impossible to play too many high-CC or too many low-CC cards. Now it seems to be that the backbone of many more decks it the CC4 slot. You can also see this behaviour in the total played cards analysis I linked in my first post in this thread.

E.g. it's really hard to play the 6-mana Elspeth now in a deck, while this was no problem then ago. The mana curve today needs to be much more standardized (centered around CC3 and CC4) than with spoils mulligan, which absolutely takes away deck construction freedom. The spoils mulligan could be and was used in deck construction to tickle more power out of your deck, which especially ramp decks and control decks could abuse. Note that also the appearance of oath reduced quite a lot.
I still think the things that happend with spoil mulligans have been far away from being unfair. What's happening in standard and modern is much stronger.

What I'm saying is: We can't take it as the fact whether the new mulligan takes or gives freedoms, since it's determined how people feel with it.


Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
I also feel that the 4c Blood Midrange deck is slow enough to have problems against Staxx and even slower controlish decks. Especially because the free-mull will make it so, that the midrange decks can not curve out as nicely as before. This of course will have to be seen. I actually will play a BO5 with my Staxx deck against Hitman (who placed second in the Gp 13) with 4C Blood for the ladder tournament. Feel free to participate in those leagues in the future, they are a lot of fun. Please also note that Hitman did not have good 4-0 finishes in his local "FNM" tournaments with 4C Blood so the deck seems to be in line. It just was an often played and copied deck in GP 13, because people made conservative deck choices because of the mulligan change 3 months before. The three trials before GP 13 on site in Frankfurt were won by RDW, Staxx and a midrangey Multicolor deck I think.

Yes, GP XIII might be a shitty statistics sample. The next GP will show.

phyrexianblackmetal

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 09-03-2014, 06:30:44 PM

I think Leipzigs tournament is not representative for this meta, because it had only 31 players and therefore much less competiton.
Comparing a 31 player tournament to a tourament with 131 players is like comparing a tournament with 131 players to one with 500 players or an 8 player Tournament to a 31 player tournament. The difference is huge.

Due to the lowered competition also bad decks can reach the top 8 due to variance reasons. As an example Benjamin Jeschke reached the top 8 with UB control. I'm not totally sure but I think he never plays Highlander (-> doesn't know the meta) and just built a deck for this tournament.

True, there might have been less competition in Leipzig, but you also have to consider that tournaments with 30+ players have to be taken into consideration, since there aren't that many huge Highlander tournaments. The Highlander GP happens only twice a year, and basing an argument on only one or two of these tournaments is simply not sufficient. The meta can shift drastically over 6 months, and the GP can only serve as a momentary representation. This is why these not-quite-huge tournaments, as well as the local metas should also be looked at to decide which mulligan is best (at least if the decision has to be made now, without waiting for some more tournament results). 

Kenshin

In my experience so far the spoils mulligan benefited two kinds of decks: Multicolor Aggro and Combo/Staxx-style decks. It made control decks almost impossible to play.

Why was that?
The Aggro decks could sculpt their perfect curve from their low range of cc (usually ranging from 1-3, sometimes to 4), they could "cheat" with their landcount because you could spoil for the right amount of lands and did not have to worry wether you drew too many or not enough lands later. You already mulled for the perfect land count and got away with playing less than 33% lands in an aggressive deck. You could increase your chances of having "that one counter" to counter the sweeper or disrupt yout opponents crucial comeback turn.

The Combo/Staxx decks usually need to either draw specific cards or suffer from "wrong-half-of-the-deck-syndrome" which can easily be evaded by spoiling your surplus cards.

The control decks still had to play a regular land count because they were dependent on drawing additional lands over the course of the game. They had to fight through the perfect curve almost every game and their opponents could pseudo sideboard with the spoils (but so could the control decks). The only thing they really were able to do with the spoils mulligan was to get rid of 4+ drops in their starting hand. But basically you had to fight through goddraws every single game.

So what has the free mulligan taken from or given to the archetypes?

Aggro: Clearly the biggest losers since they now have to play a more realistic land count and have to play more expensive cards because they can not rely on overpowering their adversary by curving out but have to play some stronger cards too. On the other hand their arch nemesis (staxx, combo) have to dig a lot more to get their interactions online.

Combo/Staxx: Now they are susceptible to the wrong-half-syndrom but because the format slowed down, they have more time to find their setup and since their opponents most likely will not play a drop every turn get the time to dig.

Control: The decks that were (almost) unplayable before hardly had to change to adapt to the new mulligan. The other decks will not try to resolve one devastating spell after another, so there is more time for card draw or own initiative. Games draw out longer, so a six drop on the starting hand is not automatically game (with spoils finding one after spoiling it was like having only 6 cards) because he is likely to still have impact despite lacking an option in the early turns.

The metagame seems to be diversified because now there are actually more viable control decks and the other decks are still viable in some form or another (usually with one less color).
As to the GP: The metagame was new and there was almost no testing done by most people. So they fell back to goodstuff lists that have an even matchup against almost anything and reward good plays. Those Blood decks did play absolutely fair magic. No unfair tricks or interactions, no silly curve or reliance on a special slot. And they now are absolutely beatable. The 4 or 5-color Aggro's of the spoils era produced games that were over after only a few turns. And having lightning fast games is usually the sign of an inherently imbalanced format.
The folks that anticipated those blood decks favoured the UR lists because they were actually quite good against a lot of decks and the perceived deck to beat. But now after the dust has settled the smaller tournaments are not overrun by either of those decks. They are just fair and beatable by adjusting to it. This was not the case before. You either howled with the wolves or got eaten. Now you can fight them and tell about it.

I hope this makes sense, as I typed it way too late in the night/early in the morning.

Maqi


Peddy Frost

#25
HI,
(first i want to excuise if my english is not proper i'm not used to type in english and dont read the green since its offtopic)

I think we have to wait for at least another half year and start with the poll again for a main reason.

The Format hasn't settled yet. My argumentation here is mainly based on my expieriences playing highlander on cockatrice and my LGS and also from the commentary of people with whom i talk about stuff like "hey what do u think about the new highlander meta?" [Which sadly isnt my girlfreind :(].
Over the past few month i played about an average of about 10-12 games a week often with recurring opponent over a certain time interval. It was shown (and not few people told so) that many players (including me) are still testing the Format and playing a new deck from week to week. since the community is not that big as it is in dci sanctioned formats it will take more time to evaluate the aftermath of mulligan change for the meta. I dont have exact numbers but it's clearly above 60% of the people I play with that haven't yet found a deck of which they would say it's good as it is right now and even can't say that about the archetype they are playing (that is only true for 0.002% of the RDW players;) ). Based on that I have to disagree with both angles of the discussion going on here. It's not possible to evaluate a restriction of the meta after looking at the last 3 big tounreys nor is it possible to talk about missions like cutting 4-5c aggro beeing accomplished. Neither of those arguments are stable to me.
What at least can be said about the new forming format is that mana issues are a bigger part of the pie as they where pre-mulligan-change. I again can only talk about my cockatrice and LGS expiriences. I imprecisley count the games in which mana issues at least play a significant role and strongly influence the outcome of the game. And from that I can say that the number of those games is about 30-35%. I don't no if its the inability of me building a reasonable mana base (which I think is the most challanging aspect of the formats change) but I can tell you that I'm not airy with manabases. And althought I try everything from 33-42 lands(and believe me in case of highlander 42 is not Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything), statistically proper color break down, copying and  adapting manabases from similar decks, Intuition, etc for almost each deck I want to play seriously it often ends up in the situation that either me or my opponent have those issues. In a Format with a best-of-3-system 30-35% is to much I think. And my Opinion about the Format right now is that althought it is a bit slower and therefore control is an option; and I think that is good, and althought there are the fundamentals of a more variety format with more viable strategies and angles to attack it is sure bit more "coin-flippier" as it was pre-free-mulligan.
If anybodies expirience differs absolutly from mine let me know. (...your secret)
I don't know how to rate this all and won't draw any conclusions hastly. 
I would rather please the Council to reconsider their decission to determine towards one or another mulligan and leave it on the watchlist for another banning season.

greetz
peddy

 

MMD

I also agree that it is too early make a decision. IMO we should stay with the free mulligan - at least – until the next GP for gaining more experiences and data out of it. The free mulligan has seriously changed the game (deckbuilding, curve, matchups, meta, etc.) and it simply takes more time to find a conclusion out of it. If we now miss the opportunity get enough information about the free-mulligan and change back to Spoils, we will never know which one is better for our format.

There is no clear "winner" of the poll at the moment, so there is also no good reason for a speedy decision. The council had the balls to - change for testing purposes - and should now also wait until we have enough information to make a final decision.
Feel free to browse through my MKM account:

http://www.magickartenmarkt.de/index.php?mainPage=showSellerChart&idInfoUser=13199

I also have a huge amount of chinese and japanese foil HL staples not listed yet,  which I would like to downgrade to english foil. Just let me know!

W0lf

Free mulligan changed highlander to some kind of weird limited like format. I tend to mulligan alot now, often down to 5 cards just to get that one broken start like elve into geist of saint draft which will end the game in my favour very very often. Also 2 colored fast decks seem to be decent again. Control decks suffer from time outs way to often because additional mulligans consume more time now. It's just a whole different game and has nothing in common with old spoils hl.

Kenshin

It is strange how much W0lf's experience differs from mine. I hardly mulligan. Maybe your decks are designed badly? But one thing is true: redundancy is much more relevant now that you can not fish for your cards. On the other hand a mulligan to 6 is bad but not game over. Mulliganing to 6 in the spoils era was a gameloss most of the time.

The time it usually took for a person to spoil is longer than it takes to mulligan several times because either the hand has "it" or not. You do not have to ponder for half a minute or longer. Control decks take longer now because they do not lose to insanity draws early all the time. They take long because they are back in the format after all and you do not need to win by combo finishes or not have a chance.

I agree on the recovered playability of two or three color strategys. In the spoils era either you played 2 colors or 4. There was hardly any incentive to play three.

I also agree with the statement that it feels like a different format now. I for one think it is good. And I would suggest that we wait at least another year until we make a decision.

W0lf

You obviously didn"t play enough hl to make sense here .Knowing when to take a mulligan  decides the games now even more than before. I'm sry but your perception of the game mechanics is too out of place for me to understand. Don't reply to this, i read enough bs for today thanks...