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[Top 4:]

There were 10 players again, mostly known faces. We played four rounds and had four players atop the standings with 3-1.

Top 4:

1. UBGw Goodstuff
2. 5c Goodstuff
3. ??
4. UGBw Goodstuff (me)

Match Report

First Round - UGBw Goodstuff
First round, first guy from Bielefeld with the mirror. Nils list differs from the one i play at around 7 cards or so. First game he just has the better draw and beats me easily. Game 2 is the other way round and i am able to tie the game. In game three i try to apply preasure against the NAtural Order in his hand, while keeping mana for a Miscalculation. As it turns out, this was a big mistake because he could counter all my threads while playing lands to trump my counter. Had the miscalculation been the Evasive Action i couldn't find, i should have won the game...

Second Round - UBg Oath
As my deck is build to stomp on slow decks and my opponent stumbles on his mana both games, nothing interessing happens here. Maybe i could have lost game 2, if my opponent countered my t2-play and played his Enlightened Tutor for Oath on his upkeep. But luckily he didn't see that...

Third Round - Elves
I expected the matchup to be really tough, but drawing one thread, one counter and cheap removal in time were enough both games. MVP of game 1 was Deathrite Shaman, who made 3 mana without me drawing any lands after the starting hand and getting my one land wasted.

Fourth Round - Naya
One game was won by his Kessing Wolf Run in combination with Mother of Runes and Garruk Primal Hunter. The other game i can't remember. But as i was paired down, my opponent couldn't reach the prices, so we split and he conceded.

Deck Report
I played Patrick's list from the GP, but couldn't find my Evasive Action and played a miscalculation which cost me a game. Before the tournament, i tried to add Ponder and Preordain to the list, but couldn't find a card besides the Sword of Fire and Ice to cut. All the time i drew the Sword, i hated it and would have loved to either draw Ponder or Preordain.
The deck has a big problem with planeswalkers and utility-lands, once they hit the board. Otherwise, one should win games against opposing goodstuff and control easily. Really agressive decks could poise problems, but the meta in Dortmund seems to shift more towards Goodstuff and Control.

Top 4 list will be on mtg-pulse as soon as they are posted on mtgforum by Auenland.

Dortmund 13.04.2013

Results:
1 Hübner, Norman 12 61
2 Haines, Sebastian 9 58,25
3 Von Der Heyde Heyde, 9
4 Kenfeld, Simon 6 58,25
5 Pieler, Martin 6 47,75
6 Grohmann, Jonas 3 61
7 Ortmann, Bjoern 3 54
8 Müller, Sven 3 52
9 Kurpicz, Florian 3 47,75

Decklists:
http://mtgpulse.com/event/12944#181506

I can't tell if the TO will contact you, Gerry, but that's all i can do for Norman to get his bye...

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.

Really cool! Thanks for this great idea.
I will talk to the TO in Dortmund this saturday. Maybe we can get the monthly event as a trial.

I really don't care, if the council or anybody else is involved in any decisions concerning this particular tournament, it's still the presumably biggest tournament for our community throughout the year. So why not make some announcement for the community?

This is not about making promotion for the organizer, but for the community. The big thing here is just to talk about such events. You don't have to organize trials or anything, just use every possible channel to get people to know about such events. And that's what i said in my previous posting. Maybe my tone was a little bit to harsh, but i waited one week after my first posting for an answer or the frontpage announcement, neither happened. So i tried to shake things up a little bit, which seemed to work.

But if this really matters that much, i will talk to JK at the Spiel on Saturday and tell him to write you an email.

And by the way, you manage to have every tournament in Karlsruhe on the frontpage, but not any other tournament in the last two or three months (i.e. Dortmund), so maybe some criticism might be appropriate.

Am i missing something? What's the problem with putting an announcement for the biggest annual tournament in Germany on the frontpage?

This is, why tournament highlander is decreasing slowly...

How about an announcement on the frontpage?

[Round 1]

You remember correctly, there were 14 players.

Like in the last months, i played Angry Hermit/Cephalid Breakfast and finished 5th.

Round 1 5c Good Stuf (i think)

My opponent kept slow hands without much disruption, i had all the things i needed in discards, combo-parts and counterspells.

Round 2 UB Control

The first game we played, my opponent played a Grindstone on turn 3, which surprised me. But after he admitted to have asked a judge before the tournament i played on. He won the game with a painter next round. After this game, i nevertheless called a judge, who confirmed that the grindstone is still banned. So the game was canceled and we started a new game one - because of my late call this was the right decision i think. So game 1 i had to fight through a wall of counterspells and removal, but he did not have any graveyard-hate or discard in his deck, so i still had chances. But after the third planeswalker (Tezzeret, Liliana, Jace) resolved, i had to concede. Game 2 i had combo plus Pact of Negation in turn 4. Game 3 he stripped the cephalid from my hand with Vendilion Clique when i was ready to go of and in the following 6 turns till the Clique finished me off, all i drew was lands.

Round 3 Mono-R

Game 1 he kept two lands and a Blood Moon and never drew the third land. For his Seal of Fire i hade bounce and could go off smoothly. Game 2 i had two counterspells to his two burnspells for Hermit Druid.

Round 4 4c Good Stuff

Here i just remember game 3, in which he tapped out for Elspeth to fasten his clock, with snapcaster for StP in hand. I drew the fourth mana source and happily won the match.

Round 5 Mono-R

Game one he was debating whether to use Seal of Fire for my Fyndhorn Elves in turn 1, which he finally did. I never drew another land to the three in my opener and wasn't able to win fast enough. Game 2 i saw a hand of lands, Warren Instigator, Kiki-Jiki and Siege-Gang Commander with a discard spell. I stripped the instigator and felt pretty save for turn 4 combo with Force in hand. But on his turn 3 he drew Magus of the Moon which he played through a Cavern of Souls for the win.

Again it was a very nice tournament, although it could still be some more players participating. This time i didn't like the price support so much, but that's just my opinion. Hopefully we can get to 20 players next time with all the small reports written here. A link to the tournament in the tournament section on the front page would certainly help, too. 

[don't know]

This is what we need:

1) Starting page  with:
a)Introduction text about highlander
b) big quarterly news feed regarding bannings (with comment function)
c) tournament locator
d) link list on top with links to:
- Banned List (each card name containing a link to a written out explanation similiar to the banlist changes)
- Forum (like international forum but with maximum 6 sub boards)
- Blog (I like this much more than Tabris games column to check out a deck. Maybe there should be a blog entry for each deck feature article. Once my computer has been fixed I will try to skype with Tabris regarding this topic)
- FAQ/Search/copyright/disclaimer stuff

i think many player don't know where & when nearby tournaments in germany are.
i can only talk from my view, in braunschweig, there 4x local tournaments every year.
mostly there are ~12-20 players, entry fee is only 5€ and the prices are always nice and highlander staples (fetches, duals, shockduals, engl. karakas, ....). but the main problem is, the most players in the nearby citys (hannover, wolfsburg, osnabrück, oldenburg, göttingen) don't know this tournament-series exist!

Two really good posts here, that finally got me posting here, too. I think, Christoph really pointed out the things, that have to be done about the magicplayer.org-page, if this page is to support the format and the tournament scene in a proper manner.

But the big thing in my opinion is the knowledge about tournaments and other players. Like cron said, players don't know, where and when tournaments are and where other players are. The playgroups are not linked with each other. For example, i didn't know about the tournaments in Braunschweig, although they aren't much further away than the tournaments in Iserlohn were. I didn't know there were players in Osnabrück, although i was there for some FNM-playing. The solution for this point has to come from the community itself. The players and organizers have to be more communicative. If we post more on the boards about our activities, more players will know about it and can join in.

So i think, you can rework the mainpage, the forum and the banned-list - why does everybody and his mother have to talk about the list in this thread? - but you will solve none of the problems, if the people don't talk about tournaments and playgroups and are willing to join and get connected with each other.

And a last point: Ask yourself how many monthly tournaments you want to play. If the answer is not more than one, you got another point, why smaller tournaments are decreasing. If there aren't grinders, who try to play three to four tournaments each month - if they know about and can reach that many - then there will be no big increase in participants, no matter what you do about it. Me for example, i could reach Iserlohn (now Dortmund), Braunschweig, Dülmen (if there was still highlander) and maybe something like Bochum (where many tournaments were thx to Frank's initiative), but because of limited time, i'm sure i would attend a maximum of three in two months, say about 1,5 per month in average.

So guys, don't waste time discussing the banned list, as bad as it may be, or big changes to the format, but go out and try to reach other players. First date for this could be the tournament in Dortmund this saturday. (http://auenland.de/?page_id=703)

edit: And if you really want to know, why so few players from the competitive scene join in on the highlander format, all players i talked to over the time - not a few from the german tournament scene - told me two points: awful mulligan and unbalanced banned list. (now i talked about the banned list myself  ) These are the two things, that hold the most players from trying out the format.

1. My point was, that if the right cards are banned, the potential for combo would be better kept in check.

2. How many cards, that are not available online, are being played? Especially cards, that matter in creating new decks/combos that have to be kept in check.

3. I agree that the biggest "problem" is the spoils mulligan, as it rewards "bad" deckbuilding. But this is a whole other topic.

4. @maggot: you can't be serious about that list. Those 16 decks might be playable, even i already doubt that, but tier 1 means number 1 ranked decks.

5. Sure, combo is not nice to play online, but if there was to be a dominant combo deck, it would be played. Look at legacy with tps.

6. To make my point clear: Maybe, the wrong cards are banned irl and banning other cards would widen the format with viable combo-decks. I know, the counsil did and does a lot of testing, to keep the format healthy, but in my opinion, the banned list is filled with a lot of cards that wouldn't be an issue. Especially if the most powerful cards in the format were banned. Survival and Library were a good start.

@ Mythrandir:

The whole meta might be that aggro-heavy because of money-issues, but the successfull decks are piloted by experienced players most of the time. And most those players have all cards available.

As the thread's name is "Comparison Highlander & Singleton", look at the Banned List in Singleton and ask yourself, why there is no combo online. And no, it's not because of price issues - many of the really good players, that play 100CS have all cards available.

I can understand everyone who claims, that there are some cards, that aren't available online but irl. But someone has to show me, how those few cards would change that much in the format.

As i'm playing a lot of 100CS at the moment, i really ask myself, why there has to be a different Banned List at all, other than the difference in sideboarding. But maybe we should really discuss this topic a lot more instead of discussing about single cards all night long...

Nice Tabris,
i was just going to ask, what you guys think is the cheapest Highlander, that could be played on MODO...

edit: Two things
1. Gerry, could you possibly send me your ww list?
2. Someone who knows, which cards form our card-pool aren't available on MODO?

Hey Gerry, if you still need player #8, i could jump in.
Currently i'm place 19 in the ladder, but if no other player wants the spot, i'll take it. 

Marchhare (UGW) - SirGalahad (Elves!) 1-2

First game he was heavily screwed and i had Regal Force, Winter Orb and Primal Command for Mox Diamond.

Second game he didn't have much more to do then Sword my Priest of Titania as i drew nothing relevant.

Third game crashed with him having 8 cards in hand and some men on the board, while i had Skyshroud Poacher, Rofellos and some other elves in play and Mirror Entity and Natural Order in hand. After the game he said, he had Bant Charm and Mana Drain, but his mana would have allowed him to play only one, so i think i would have won the game.

Forth game was won because he missed one or two crucial land drops and i had Deranged Hermit and Mirror Entity.