Category: Banlist updates

  • July 2008 Banlist Update

    July 2008 Banlist Update

    Effective from July 15, 2008

    Banned:

    Unbanned:

    • No changes

    Watchlist:

    Reasoning:

    Cephalid Breakfast Deck
    This deck, which Oliver Malina piloted to a decisive win at the most recent Highlander Grand Prix, has been found to be too powerful for the Highlander format after extensive testing. This has prompted action from the council.

    Cephalid Illusionist
    Unlike Hermit Druid, which is often played in decks that do not rely on it as a pure combo piece, Cephalid Illusionist serves only as a dedicated combo card. While it requires another card (like Shuko, Lightning Greaves, or an En-Cor creature) to enable the graveyard-filling combo, it has a significant advantage in that it can do so without needing to overcome summoning sickness. Additionally, Cephalid Illusionist can fill the graveyard to a precise level, whereas Hermit Druid mills the entire deck, forcing players to safeguard the combo more thoroughly.

    Dread Return
    Since the Hermit Druid combo is still possible, the council deliberated extensively on whether Hermit Druid should also be banned. Since many players enjoy playing Hermit Druid as a utility card and it has not been a ban-worthy issue outside of this combo, the council decided to disrupt the combo instead. Previously, Hermit Druid in combination with Narcomoeba and Acorn Harvest or Chatter of the Squirrel was a one-card win condition. Now, players must have a reanimation spell in hand to win the game. The decision was made that Dread Return must leave the format. If Hermit Druid still proves to be too strong, it may swap places with Dread Return in a future banning season.

    Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
    Another two-card combo of concern is Buried Alive and a reanimation spell, which can place Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Pestermite, and Karmic Guide in the graveyard to create infinite haste creatures and end the game immediately. This combo can even be constructed as a mono-colored deck, which the council finds threatening enough to act preemptively.

    Painter’s Servant
    The well-known combo of Painter’s Servant and Grindstone from other formats is a two-card instant win combo. With only 6 mana, the game can end instantly. Additionally, since both combo pieces are artifacts, they can be played in nearly any deck. The council has decided that this combo is too strong and too easy to set up, so Painter’s Servant is being banned.

    Chain of Plasma
    The combo of Chain of Plasma and Swans of Bryn Argoll is also too strong. After testing multiple, relatively untuned builds of this deck, the council decided to prevent the potential dominance of this combo in the Highlander format. Since Swans of Bryn Argoll enables interesting board interactions, while Chain of Plasma is essentially a burn spell dealing 3 damage for 2 mana, the council opted to remove Chain of Plasma from the format.

    Watchlist Changes

    Life from the Loam
    The upcoming Retrace mechanic, which allows spells with Retrace to be cast from the graveyard by discarding a land as an additional cost, raises concerns about Life from the Loam. Since it can return lands to hand each turn, it could become a critical enabler for Retrace spells. Because it is unknown which specific Retrace cards will be printed, Life from the Loam has been placed on the watchlist. The council recognizes that Life from the Loam is a central card in the format, so if it needs to be banned, it is likely that other cards will need to be banned as well.

    Hermit Druid
    While the council decided not to ban Hermit Druid at this time, the card is now on the watchlist. If further testing shows that Hermit Druid is still too powerful or enables problematic combos, it may be banned in a future banning season.

    Other Watchlist Changes
    The following cards have been removed from the watchlist because they have shown no problematic behavior:

    General Philosophy: Combos in Highlander
    While it has not been an official part of the banning policy, it has become clear from council discussions that the Highlander council does not want pure combo decks to become Tier 1 archetypes. For the majority of players, combo decks are the least enjoyable to face, as the combo player’s actions often render the opponent’s plays irrelevant. This results in minimal player interaction, which the council does not find desirable.

    Although the council has strived to keep as many deck archetypes viable as Tier 1 decks as possible, the council has now decided to actively promote a more interactive format. This decision was made after weighing the preferences and interests of the player base. While the council recognizes that this move may alienate combo enthusiasts, it believes the overall benefits to the format outweigh this downside.

    From now on, the goal is to ensure that Highlander remains an interactive format, with reduced reliance on non-interactive combo decks. The council acknowledges that this decision could be controversial, but it is committed to following this path.

    Closing Remarks
    Highlander is intended to be a fun and engaging format. Combo decks are generally seen as less enjoyable, especially for the player sitting on the opposite side of the table. The main goal of the banning policy is to promote interaction, and the council believes this step will significantly improve interaction within the format.

  • April 2008 Banlist Update

    April 2008 Banlist Update

    Effective from April 15, 2008

    Banned:

    Unbanned:

    • No changes

    Watchlist:

    • No changes

    Reasoning:
    These changes are purely cosmetic and were made following a suggestion from a user. Both of these cards were not officially listed as banned but were effectively treated as such. As of April 15, 2008, they are now officially part of the banned list.

    Both cards come from a “set” called Happy Holidays (Special) and have a silver border, which typically denotes cards that are not tournament-legal.

  • January 2008 Banlist Update

    January 2008 Banlist Update

    Due to the currently very well-balanced state of the format, no changes will be made to the banned list as of January 15, 2008.

  • October 2007 Banlist Update

    October 2007 Banlist Update

    As of October 1, 2007, no changes will be made to the Banned List or the Watchlist. Based on all known testing results, the changes implemented on July 1 have had exactly the intended effect: Pure combo appears to be knocked out, Stax is significantly weakened, and control is playable once again.

    The only change being officially implemented is the retirement of the old 0-1-7 land Highlander mulligan. It is officially being replaced with the new mulligan, which has proven itself, has generally been well received, and, as far as we know, has already been used for several months in every tournament played under MagicPlayer.org rules.

  • August 2007 Banlist Update

    August 2007 Banlist Update

    Single Card Explanations

    Protean Hulk

    Protean Hulk will be banned from the format because even without Flash he provides a basis for a viable combo deck. By reanimating and sacrificing Hulk the combo engine stays nearly the same. This problem could only be avoided by banning other cards like Entomb. We chose to ban Hulk and not Entomb, because Entomb is “broken” with no other card in the format, but can be put to good use in many decks, while Hulk will always be merely a combo piece. Thus banning Entomb would limit deck building far more than the absence of Hulk does. This decision was based on the same argumentation as the banning of Worldgorger Dragon.

    Flash

    Flash gets banned to get around similar combo decks which could otherwise surprisingly emerge in between two banning seasons if other abuseable creatures hit the format in the future.

    Balance

    Unbanning Balance did not have the desired effect of improving control decks in the format. Instead of that Balance was abused by combo decks as the ultimate no-brainer creature removal. Furthermore the stax deck abused Balance as a combination of Wrath of God/Mind Twist/Armageddon for just two mana. In this respect unbanning Balance was a mistake which we hereby rectify.

    Tolarian Academy

    The last Highlander GP (in Germany, with 96 players competing) showed more than clearly the format-defining position of the Stax deck. Among the Top nine decks four players used such an artifact-based deck. The overwhelming dominance of this decktype was just stopped by extremely fast combo decks like HulkFlash or TPS and another deck which ran a huge load of artifact hate. In addition to that this decktype is confronting the metagame with the permanent threat of massive land destruction. For this reason we decided to intervene by banning the most powerful and threatening card of this deck type: Tolarian Academy.

    While it’s true that artifacts can easily be destroyed, we feel it’s not healthy if success in our format depends on either being able to destroy at least two artifacts by turn four, or even having won by then already. We think that ‘Stax’ decks will remain playable even without Tolarian Academy. If this should turn out wrong, the power of this deck was obviously based on one “broken” card. Since all other decks (except for Yawgmoth’s Will in TPS, see next paragraph) lack access to comparably powerful cards, we decided to take regulating action here.

    Yawgmoth’s Will

    Especially the decision whether we want the TPS deck to stay in the format in its actual form took us a long time and alot of debating. At last we decided to subscribe to the view of Hajo, SimonG and some other people and ban Yawgmoth’s Will. The other option would have been to ban Gifts Ungiven. But Gifts does not do such broken things in other decks and is also an important card in every control deck. This is the reason why we want to keep Gifts in the format. Possibly TPS will now shift to being played Iggy-Pop-style, replacing Y.W. by Ill-Gotten-Gains, but we are convinced that the resulting deck won’t be powerful enough to be a viable pure combo deck. We assume the deck will have to play some kind of other, defensive strategies to get the extra time needed.

    Lion’s Eye Diamond

    Lion’s Eye Diamond is another card which is only interesting for combo decks and would probably turn out to be the basis for the next-best combo deck with Auriok Salvagers. Since we don’t want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, we applied preventive measures here.

    Because Tolarian Academy is no longer permitted, Crop Rotation can rotate back in and will be legal for play use in Magicplayer-Highlander as of 07/15/2007.

    Changes to the Mulligan rule

    The new Mulligan rule has been accepted as expected and we have received very positive feedback. The major criticisms have been addressed by the changes presented below, since the Combo-decks have had there potency greatly reduced, and many saw the combo-decks advantaged by this mulligan rule. The problem of “receiving a bad hand after the new mulligan and subsequently having to mulligan to 6 cards = Autoloss”, will be prevented by allowing the Mulligan rule once for the hand of his choosing. If you receive a bad 7 card hand, you could directly go to 6 cards without rejecting any cards. You can then apply the new mulligan rule on the 6 card hand so you would not be entirely helpless to a 7 card optimized hand.

    In General

    We have extended our Banning Policy to include the following point 5:

    Point 5 of the Banning Policy

    If a deck is playable only because of the existence of a “broken” card, then it has no right to existence in this environment and the broken card will be banned.

    It is clear to us that there are points of argument regarding this case and that the decisions made under this point must be extremely well considered. We will continue to attempt to cater to your demands as well as our own in regard to care in maintaining and creating a healthy and balanced format.

    Further Thoughts

    The idea of unbanning further tutor cards and the future strategy of key-card bannings, was critically addressed. However, we concluded that the number of available good tutors is adequate. Unbanning further tutors would not provide any advantages. Especially regarding the Mystical Tutor, we spent a long time debating its worth. We decided it to be a Combo-Tutor card. Since we want to distance ourselves somewhat from excellent combodecks and also do not wish decks such as WWu and Stax to gain further tutors for their Armageddon-Effects, the decision was made to keep the card banned.

    Demonic Tutor

    Demonic Tutor remains as the best tutor in the format since we wish to have one really good, universal tutor in this format and consider this tutor to be less dangerous than Vampiric Tutor especially since Balance will no longer be legal. In our opinion, the sorcery speed and the double cost is a greater disadvantage than not having the card directly in your hand. The Vampiric is considered the best tutor for any potentially emerging future combodeck. Even the possibility in a control deck to wait for a threat from the opponent and in response an EoT tutor to search for the perfect answer is considered by us stronger than the advantage of the Demonic.

    Mystical Tutor

    Mystical Tutor presents the same advantages. Mystical Tutor searches for effects that can only be countered in contrast to enlightened tutor or worldly tutor which search for “Permanents” which can be attended to in various ways. As an example, just think of how good this addition to the HulkFlash deck would have been: it will find the Hulk (through the Summoner’s Pact), as well as the Flash, and even Duress, Orim’s Chant or Abeyance in order to protect the combo.

    Insertion:

    In addition – and this is just my personal opinion! – Demonic Tutor has a sense of charm that no other Magic card achieves. A banning of this card reduces the flare of Magic somewhat.

    Umezawa’s Jitte

    Umezawa’s Jitte has not been unbanned despite several demands from players in the Forum. The reason remains the same as the reason we originally banned the card. We decided to ban Umezawa’s Jitte for the following reasons:

    1. Powerlevel and casting cost: Jitte provides a way too high powerlevel according to it’s casting costs and card type (artifact). Jitte combines multiple important functions in one card. It offers board control and fast kills for just two mana. Because the equipped creature only needs to deal damage, not combat damage, Jitte is almost always impossible to handle.
    2. Missing self-regulation: The intended self-regulation through its legendary status (my Jitte destroys your Jitte) from WotC’s R&D does not work for Jitte. It’s far less likely to draw Umezawa’s Jitte the time needed than in other formats to destroy the opposing Jitte. Thereby the luck factor in a aggro vs. aggro matchup becomes more and more important because a Jitte which could not be handled for two or more turns is in most cases equal to victory.

    Besides, Umezawa’s Jitte in this format presents an unwelcome and unnecessary worsening of the format.

    Conclusion

    We hope with these decision to have allowed a better and broader metagame which has less of a Type 1 feeling. This time we have attempted to achieve a greater level of transparency in our decisions. We are greatly looking forward to your discussions in the forum may it be criticisms or compliments: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?board=16.0

  • July 2007 Banlist Update

    July 2007 Banlist Update

    Banned List for tournament Highlander Magic.

    Valid during July 15th, 2007 0:00 CET until October 14th, 2007 24:00 CET. Please note changes as of July 15th! Until July 14th, 2007 (incl.) the format is valid without the changes. This depends on the starting date of the tournament.

    Changes to the present list, effective 07/15/2007:

    Banned

    Unbanned

  • April 2007 Banlist Update

    April 2007 Banlist Update

    Effective from April 15, 2007

    The decisive factor is the start date of the tournament or the date for which a tournament is scheduled.

    Changes to the previous list:

    • No changes
  • January 2007 Banlist Update

    January 2007 Banlist Update

    As of January 1, 2007, no changes were made to the banned or watchlist. There is a lack of meaningful test and tournament results.

  • November 2006 Banlist Update

    November 2006 Banlist Update

    Banned:

    Unbanned:

    Watch List (Changes):

    Added to Watchlist:

    Removed from Watchlist:

    Reasoning:

    1. Crop Rotation
    The format is currently perceived as healthy, with many different deck types being playable and played. However, TPS (The Perfect Storm) has emerged as a front-runner due to its immense speed, which surpasses many other decks. It is considered essential for the format to keep “combo” viable but to prevent it from becoming absolutely dominant. For this reason, Crop Rotation was banned in order to remove what is effectively a second Tolarian Academy from the deck, thereby reducing its explosiveness.

    2. Mana Vault
    The banning of Mana Vault was guided by the concept of a “gradual slowdown” of the format. Mana Vault creates situations where 5 or more mana can be generated on turn 2, leading to game states that become irreversible at such an early stage of the game. Moreover, it has been observed that the currently above-average decks — Stax, TPS, and FiresGeddon — all make use of Mana Vault. In an effort to intervene and slow down the pace of the game, Mana Vault was banned.

    3. Trinisphere
    Trinisphere can create a turn 1 lock with the help of Mishra’s Workshop (and other cards), which most decks cannot overcome. The Grand Prix-winning Stax deck made heavy use of Trinisphere to prevent the opponent from taking any meaningful actions or responses. To reduce such early decisions in the game and to maintain a chance for players to recover from early setbacks, Trinisphere was banned.

    4. Balance
    Balance has been reintroduced to the format. It has become apparent from the Grand Prix and other developments that control decks have fallen behind and are not being played successfully. To make control more attractive and provide a useful tool against the Beatdown strategies of various decks, Balance was unbanned.

    5. Watchlist Changes