Changes to the current Highlander Ban- and Unban-watchlists:
None
Reasonings
Mystical Tutor
As expected, Mystical Tutor made its way into UW and UR as a staple. It performs strongly, providing both archetypes with a reliant go-to play (be it Price of Progress, Bonfire of the Damned, Terminus or Entreat the Angels), but doesn’t seem overpowered so far. That being said, its potential as a combo enabler has not been unlocked yet and we want to further observe its role in the aforementioned archetypes UW and UR.
Tolarian Academy
Evidence seems to indicate, that this card is safe to stay. Its sheer potential though leads us to the decision to rather err on the side of caution and leave it on watch as of now.
True-Name Nemesis
TNN clearly has become a format staple, though most people seem to have adapted to it. Most archetypes have powerful cards that function as a solution to TNN, for example Golgari Charm, Phantasmal Image, Toxic Deluge and other Wrath-effects etc. Long forgotten cards like Marsh Casualties are seeing play now, which enriches the format and shows that it is ready to handle many threats, even ones as strong as TNN. Furthermore (and maybe unexpectedly), games which involve TNN only seldomly become “dumb” but more often than not develop an interesting tempo-oriented twist, where damage calculation, racing, chump-attacking etc. matter very much. Still, TNN is an absurdly strong, pro-active threat and therefore deserves a little more time under scrutiny – and consequently stays on watch.
Gifts Ungiven
The metagame still needs to develop more. There seems to be a slight shift in the direction of Blue-based strategies. This is surely in part of the recent unbannings and the release of TNN. It might also be because people want to try the new tools they got to play with and because Highlander players (on average) have a tendency to play more controllish strategies. We want to let the meta evolve more before we decide the verdict on Gifts Unigven.
We are aware that Sensei’s Divining Top is an autoinclude in many archetypes and its repeatable effect consumes more time than usual in comparison to other cards. Nevertheless, we feel that it is not quite strong enough and its in-game behavior is not quite distorting enough to warrant a ban.
We encourage judges to keep a close eye on slow play and stalling issues. Don’t hesitate to call a judge when you feel that your opponent is taking too long to resolve SDT activations. We advise players to rather err on the side of calling one, than to feel bad when the game ends in a draw (which usually doesn’t serve any of the players involved).
Tolarian Academy
Tournament results indicate that, although academy-centric artifact decks are a viable option now, there is no dominance of the archetype. Tolarian Academy is a very strong card and enables very powerful plays, but you have to set it up correctly, which allows the opponent to interact and to disrupt your plans.
We therefore think it is good for the diversity of our format to have Academy back. Nevertheless we will keep it on the watchlist because the sheer power level and the possibilities offered by Academy demand a continued surveillance.
True Name Nemesis
It seems that all the relevant arguments for and against a ban of TNN have been exchanged by now. Individual experiences and stances on the matter vary nevertheless. We have decided to gather more data on the subject and further investigate True Name Nemesis and its effect on the format.
Mystical Tutor
We chose to unban Mystical Tutor.
This will give white Control decks a powerful new tool to enable its miracles and allows them to find silver bullets in order to solve specific problems.
Furthermore we hope that the momentarily (mostly) absent Combo archetype will be able to make good use of the tutor. It should be noted that, at the moment, there are no fast, spell-based decks known in Highlander that profit more from Mystical than they do from Demonic Tutor. We are aware that Mystical Tutor offers very potent EOT plays that may decide a game rather abrupt (e. g. by fetching up a Price of Progress or Entreat the Angels). However, it can be argued that Demonic Tutor is even stronger in the late and mid game. This is why many players feel it is strange that Mystical was banned but Demonic Tutor never was.
As is usual for unbanned cards Mystical Tutor will stay on the watchlist.
Entomb
We felt that the Reanimator strategy might need a little boost in power and discussed the unbanning of Entomb as a possible option.
However, the line of “T1 Entomb, T2 Animate Dead/Exhume/Reanimate…” on the play is rather devastating and should win the game by itself almost always. In contrast to other cards like Careful Study, Faithless Looting etc. Entomb not only enables the reanimation spells but also allows the tutoring of the strongest target depending on the matchup.
Ultimately, we felt that Entomb won’t lead to enjoyable games because of its arguably broken early game potential.
Gifts Ungiven
This led us to Gifts Ungiven. If we wanted to strengthen Reanimator we could possibly unban Gifts Ungiven instead of Entomb.
Its effect is very powerful, but doesn’t come down on turn 1. The fact that it costs four mana means it can’t be used until the midgame, where the opponent has had time to develop its own strategy and is able to fight back. Furthermore, Gifts Ungiven requires serious thought and is a very skill-intensive card.
In addition to that, it is a tool that not only Reanimator can use. It will find a home in other strategies as well, such as Control, but also Combo and blue Midrange strategies. Gifts is a “build-around-me”-type card that allows for powerful toolboxing outside of the green centered “GSZ-Eladamri’s Call-Worldly Tutor” paradigm and might give birth to new archetypes just of itself. Gifts Ungiven will undoubtedly inspire deckbuilders to tinker with new brews and to tweak their current lists, which is a good thing per se.
We are aware though that Dread Return and Unburial Rites allow for some nasty Gifts piles which might be too broken considering the overall strength and multi-dimensionality of Gifts Ungiven.
Of course, we want to hear your opinion on this matter.
Mulligan
It was last year October, when we stated – regarding the introduction of the Free Mulligan – that we would observe the new mulligan rule for at least six months. These six months have passed by now. The majority of the players seem to like the Free Mulligan rule better than the old variant. Nevertheless, there is a non-negligible group of players which prefers the old Spoils Mulligan.
We said, if the Free Mulligan proved to be at least on par with the Spoils Mulligan, we would stick with the Free Mulligan. All things considered, this is arguably the case right now. We set three benchmark criteria against which the new Mulligan had to be measured:
1) Metagame – The metagame seems to be as diverse as with the Spoils Mulligan. New decks have emerged, others have faded. It can be stated, that there hasn’t been a shift to an unhealthy, non-diverse meta.
2) In-game behavior – Gameplay has changed to some degree. Games tend to go a little longer, tend to be a bit more swingy, some weight has shifted from the early game to the late game. Overall, the change in gameplay seems to be appreciated by the majority of players. It seems safe to say, there hasn’t been a drastic change between how games play out before and after the rules change – Highlander still feels like Highlander.
3) Community opinion – As already mentioned, there is no unanimous consent. However, the larger part of the community likes the new Free Mulligan rule better than the old one.
In accordance with what was said above, we will keep the Free Mulligan. However, we have an open ear to the community, we listen to your concerns. We will observe the rules change for a little longer to make sure, that everything witnessed so far hasn’t been a false impression. We will decide this issue without rushing things.
We cover here the new cards that have entered the list, (True-Name Nemesis and Entomb). Reasonings for the past cards (Sensei’s Divining Top, Tolarian Academy and Mystical Tutor) have not changed. To review them, please the recent announcements.
True-Name Nemesis
True-Name Nemesis has struck Legacy reducing the deck diversity, but the situation is not that clear in Highlander. The card does not invalidate any of the strategies, especially combo, but it pushes the luck of early turns in creature match ups reducing the interaction on board. It does require specific removal, but so far we haven’t seen the card selections or meta to tie itself around this card. However, we want to add it to the watchlist should corrective measures be taken.
Entomb
Entomb has been regarded as one of best cards of various reanimation strategies, as it can in tandem with a two mana reanimation spell introduce the best selected second turn threat from a deck. However, Enbomb was not originally banned due to the few second turn reanimation spells of the format, but due to the increasing number of good reanimation targets that entered the format constantly, Iona, Shield of Emeria being the last one. We feel this may have been a wrong approach, and not enough peer review time from community was given to see whether the card is disturbing for the format. At the time when Entomb got banned, reanimator was not that heavily played, and this is still true. Also meanwhile, various graveyard based hosers (Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze) have been printed that see play. Furthermore along reanimator, Entomb is visioned to enable various other graveyard based decks (Hulk, Loam) and in this light it is positively reviewed to push deck diversity.
A Tinker for green creatures. While the format doesn’t have moxes (and probably never will), we do have several first turn mana dudes, and the current design trend is that we continue seeing them. In fact, we have so many of them that the pressure to ban Natural Order has grown, especially since it continues to appear in top 8 lists in large numbers. The “Natural Order+Primeval Titan”-package more and more becomes an auto-include in some of the most popular archetypes, e. g. Goodstuff, Midrange Bant and even in some Naya-builds.
Goodstuff (24/33) Naya (11/33) Bant Midrange (18/26) Almost 30% of all listed decks include Natural Order (~115/400). (Source: mtgpulse.com)
Furthermore Natural Order assembles the very powerful combo “Dark Depths+Thespian’s Stage” quite easily – a new threat that has already become a nuisance in some communities.
Generally, when Natural Order resolves you get an awesome board presence that your opponent is very unlikely to deal with completely or has to spend so many resources on in order to keep up with you, that your other cards will be able to run away with the game. On top of this, Natural Order almost always demands an immediate answer from your opponent, which makes it even harder to deal with. It thus creates harsh do-or-die scenarios that more often than not decide games in a very random and non-interactive manner.
In the end, the combination of its statistical dominance together with its distorting in-game behaviour led us to the decision to ban this card.
Tolarian Academy / Mishra’s Workshop
Staxx and other artifact-based decks haven’t appeared much on the latest toplists. Some of the most popular archetypes like Bant, Goodstuff, Naya and 5C-Aggro often have the appropriate toolbox to deal with the keycards of Staxx. At the recent GP there was just one out of hundred decks which employed an artifact-based strategy.
As a consequence we decided to give those decks a new toy to play with. We are nevertheless aware that now there are very many goodies available (Academy, Workshop, Mind over Matter, Trinisphere etc.) which made those decks quite consistent and dominant in the past.
Tolarian Academy stays in close observation, as its potential as a key card for non-interactive combo is known. The game is expected to slow down with the introduction of the new mulligan, but with the tutoring power present in the format, building a combo shell around Tolarian Academy is perfectly possible, and we want to see what kind of a new archetype this presents. Should it be harmful for the meta, we have to rethink Academy.
Oath of Druids
The reasons to observe Oath of Druids haven’t changed much since we have introduced it on the watchlist. 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 which was able to end the game right there after one turn. Nevertheless we haven’t seen many top-lists including Oath on mtgpulse.com so we decided not to ban Oath of Druids yet.
Sensei’s Divining Top / Mana Drain
Both cards are more or less a community choice. The highlander council always tries to record the feedback of the community members and value that input highly in our internal discussions. Back in 2012 we made a small survey on a grand prix about former banned list. The results 2012:
We want to take a closer look at Mana Drain and Sensei’s Divining Top and want to ignite a discussion about both cards with the community again. So please let us know about your opinion on these cards.
Demonic Tutor / Mystical Tutor
We are still evaluating if a change on those tutors would make sense and if the effects especially on the meta would be positive. Our last time announcements on those cards are still valid.
Dark Depths
Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage combine into a two card combo which threatens to win the game within short time. Both cards involved are lands, which makes the combo somewhat hard to disrupt. Also the created Marit Lage Avatar, thanks to his indestructibility, is not easily dispatched.
The whole combo can be found with many strong cards you’d already play – Primeval Titan, Intuition, Knight of the Reliquary – so it can be added to decks with little cost.
Other announcements
Free Mulligan
The first time a player takes a mulligan, he or she draws a new hand of as many cards as he or she had before. Subsequent hands decrease by one card as normal (cf. Comprehensive Rules, 103.4c).
Beim ersten Mulligan zieht der Spieler eine Hand mit so vielen Karten wie er zuvor hatte. Die nachfolgenden Hände reduzieren sich dann wie üblich um eine Karte (vgl. Comprehensive Rules, 103.4c).
Reasons for introducing the free mulligan
First of all, Highlander is a form of Magic – with all its strengths and its flaws. We neither want to invent a new game nor try to get rid of all the potential flaws the game has, but we want to stay as close to the basic rules of MtG as possible.
Often, the mulligan-system is recognized as the most annoying “flaw” of Magic because the randomness of opening hands can lead to frustrating games where one side of the table never has the chance to take part in the game. There were different approaches to correct this: The “0,1,6,7-mulligan rule” (where you had the chance to take a free mulligan each time you had a hand with 0,1,6 or 7 lands), the free mulligan, the overdraw (draw 9 cards, put 2 cards on bottom) and the so called spoils mulligan.
The main aim of all those approaches was to decrease the risk of losing the game before it even started by giving the players a tool that would allow them to shape their starting resources (available mana and spells in their starting hand) to some degree and thus give both players the chance to take part in a game.
At that time, the spoils mulligan seemed to be the best way for the Highlander Council to deal with this problem. So we decided to make a drastic change of the Magic basic rules by adding this mulligan rule to the Magic universe. While we played with spoils we found out that the rule worked well but had to accept that there also were some downsides attached to it. You can follow the discussion on this topic right here: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=934.0.
One big development that is often regarded as problematic was that – over time and through the printing of new powerful spells that gradually rose in power level – curving out became more and more important. Additionally, the release of the new fetch land cycle allowed players to fix their mana better than ever before. The spoils mulligan was used (some say abused) as a tool to not only sculpt your hand in a way that would allow you to participate in the game but rather to refine your starting hand to such a degree that you would be able to curve out with a sequence of cheap and powerful spells that would eventually overpower your opponent.
One could argue – and indeed we do – that the spoils mulligan might not any longer be the optimal solution for the Highlander format. Overall card quality increased and “getting your game going” is usually quite achievable. Instead the spoils mulligan became a mighty weapon that allowed players to run 4 or even 5 colors with ease and therefore enabled a strategy of “just the best cards”.
Although this strategy was legit within the recent rules frame we must admit that it wasn’t originally intended when the spoils mulligan was introduced to the Highlander format.
Indeed the community was split by the question if the spoils mulligan is boon or bane of the Highlander format. Through discussion the question quickly became: Is the free mulligan rule superior to the current spoils mulligan rule?
With the above said in mind, the main argument for the free mulligan is consequently as follows: It allows players “to be in the game” without being able to sculpt their starting hand as perfectly as the spoils mulligan allowed.
With our two goals in mind
a) to stay as close as possible to the official Magic rules and b) to reduce the risk that games are decided just by the mulligan
we come to the conclusion that the spoils mulligan isn’t needed anymore and that it is not superior to the free mulligan which seems to solve the problems at hand better than the spoils mulligan.
We decided that there would be only one way to prove this and therefore introduced the free mulligan so we could analyze what will happen over a period of at least 6 month and then decide on fundamental tournament data and play experiences.
That’s why we put the free mulligan on the watchlist. We are fully aware that introducing this rules change is drastic and we want to make clear that nobody can say what will happen with 100% certainty.
When in the end it becomes clear that the free mulligan is superior or at least as good as the spoils mulligan regarding (1.) the metagame, (2.) the Highlander-games itself and (3.) the community opinon, we will stay with the free mulligan in the future. If not, there is no need to stick to bad rules and we can reverse the ruling and go back to the spoils mulligan.
Please help us to find out the answer by posting decklists, tournament results and don’t stay away of playing highlander or split from the highlander community. Share your opinion with the community. Your voice will be heard.
Main arguments gathered from the feedback have been:
With spoils mulligan interaction starts earlier and games are decided more often on the first turns, making the format too fast
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
Mulligan is exploited solely for manafixing by lowering the amount of lands in a build, and as a standard strategy “deep mulligan” is then used
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
Spoils mulligan is no longer needed as available mana producing lands printed since 2007 is sufficient now
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.
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.
There are no changes to be announced to the watchlist, which remains the same (as in: http://highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=watchlist). Potential changes are announced next time April 1st, 2013.
As we stated in our last watch list announcement in April 1st. 2012, Enlightened Tutor was banned in 2009 to correct an environment in which the tutor was “used to fetch Survival of the Fittest, Back to Basics or Blood Moon, and from artifact side Winter Orb”. We’ve come to notice during the last few years that the format has evolved greatly from those time, so the statement does not to carry its weight that much anymore. As the format has gotten faster, we’ve also chosen an approach to ban overpowered keycards than to touch tutors, with Gifts being an exception. We anticipate that Enlightened Tutor’s role in the format is to strengthen various combo strategies, in which color white hasn’t been playing much role so far, as well as control decks alike. We do have plenty of non-permanent creature, and all-purpose tutors, but not so many competitive non-permanent tutors to fetch solely artifacts or enchantments. However, the inclusion of Enlightened Tutor to the list of allowed cards comes with a watchlist tag. Main concern we’ve come to recognize is that Oath based decks get a significant boost from Enlightened Tutor. With lots of creature based decks around, it is now easier than ever to trigger Oath for Emrakul or even for same turn kill if bomberman shell is used. But since Oath hasn’t been seen in the top-8 lists much, we’re cautiously optimistic to see the impact.
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Fast mana has always been bane pushing this game into an unwanted direction, often involving early turn swingy plays to the fundamental turn kills in degenerate combos. However, in this format we believe Lion’s Eye Diamond is an exception as setting it up in a graveyard centric manner with big decks is more difficult than in other eternal formats. Thus we’re ready to put the card back into test. Latest appearance of the card was back in 2007 in GP3, when the card reached as the only copy the top8 in a TPS build. Note that we’re going against the original ban clause here which was specifically to ban LED due to its interaction in combo. So why exactly are we unbanning the card now? Yawgmoth’s Will has already been legal for 6 months, but seen very little play. That has been one motivator for us to push this package further to see if TPS (the main motivator behind the original ban) manages to evolve into a real deck which so far has been missing from top-8 lists. However, LED introduces some other potential combo scenarios, and that’s why we want to keep the card on the watchlist. One reason is the bomberman shell (even more now that Enlightened Tutor re-enters the format) which could enable third turn wins from play with Oath, Salvagers, LED and Pyrite Spellbomb. Another vector is how well Doomsday manages to take advantage of piles in which Lion’s Eye Diamond has seen use in Vintage and Legacy. Then there are the few rogue, graveyard centric decks like Dredge and Madness which LED gives an additional boost, but we don’t expect them to poise a problem. The coming three months before the next watchlist announcement should tell us where things are heading.
Demonic Tutor
People might think something drastic has happened to the format if one of the untouchables has finally gotten on the list. Quite frankly, we’ve pondered this move for some time now, and with this watchlist addition want to ignite discussion of the role of the tutors in our format at present, or more specifically, what kind of tutors we should permit, and if we should heed any experiences from other formats. One well known fact is that the less powerful Imperial Seal is not tolerated in the format largely due to it’s availability and price, but Demonic is. From power level standpoint, this is lopsided. We also have evidence that players are willing to splash just for Demonic, but we haven’t seen that kind of deckbuilding with other tutors. With this, we want to challenge the traditional thinking by asking if the format would be better if one of its strongest tutors is dismissed for the benefit of weaker one-mana Mirage instant tutors, or if the tutor policy we’re driving is completely wrong.
Natural Order
Tinker for green creatures. While the format doesn’t have moxes (and probably never will), we do have several first turn mana dudes. In fact, we have so many of them, that pressure to ban Natural Order grows, especially since it has been seen quite a lot in top 8 lists. We don’t know yet what’s the standard “recovery percent” if Natural Ordering is achieved in matches on third turn, but judging from the top-8 lists it can’t be good. That is the reason why we’ve taken the card under supervision and determine if something should be done, at earliest in 6 months.
Stoneforge Mystic
Nothing much has changed with this dude, so it’s being kept on the list. Main applications for Mystic are still Sword of Fire and Ice and Batterskull.
Worldly Tutor
The same status quo is with Worldy Tutor, mainly due to reason already stated in our last announcement.. Things are now a little bit different as we also have Demonic and Mystical Tutor on the watchlist, Enlightened unbanned and several other tutors undecided. All but one cards on the watchlist currently have tutor capabilities, so we want to give enough time both for community peer review as for the top-8 lists to be collected to show what route should be taken.
Mystical Tutor
Adding one last Mirage tutor to the mix, we’ve taken seemingly the most powerful Mystical Tutor in to see what are the ramifications hypothetically if Demonic Tutor were to exchanged to Mystical and to spark discussion (see Demonic Tutor above). In comparison to Demonic, Mystical has an advantage in how it can be used to setup miracle cards like Entreat the Angels, Temporal Mastery and Bonfire of the Damned. On the other hand, one has to ask if we really want to have a format in which cards can be tutored at instant speed EOT, prior having preserved the counter deterrent during opponent’s turn.
Other announcements
Council roster changes
The longest time member of the current roster, Timo Barwisch a.k.a. Malz77 has implied his willingness to step down as the member of the council and make room for others to carry on the torch. We’ve approached Maqi, who has not only been actively reporting tournaments, but also participating into discussion and showing dedication for Highlander in general. With these changes, we want to thank Timo for his hard work, and in return wish Thomas welcomed to the council.
Unplanned downtime
Some of you may have noticed late evening (CET) a slight downtime with magicplayer.org domain, in form of standard 404 http error message or alternatively “Domain is disabled” error.
This was due to a human error caused by accidentally dropping the DNS mapping of magicplayer.org’s account. It was fixed in matter of hours once our webmaster (derStefan82) was notified about his.
Based on the tournament results we are ready to remove Yawgmoth’s Will and Dread Return from the Watchlist but decided to gather some more data in the next three month before we come to our final decision.
