Messages

A. Among few other things, the Spoils mulligan is what made this format unique and so much better than others.

Originally by ChristophO: "I reread the discussion about the introduction of the spoils mulligan and THAT situation clearly was neither democratic nor fair."

Can you please post the links for this?

@Frank: ChristophO *may* point to this post: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=882.msg9121#msg9121 (follow the link to old phpbb-boards).

In any case: We've went through the old posts from archived boards on how the spoils came to be, to better understand what purpose exactly it serves, and to review whether it serves that same purpose anymore (without side effects).

Larger community discussion on the mulligan you can backtrack from the start of the same thread I linked you to.

Following the link in the post you mentioned and linked gives me a 404.

I reread the discussion about the introduction of the spoils mulligan and THAT situation clearly was neither democratic nor fair.

Can you please post the links for this?

Thank you for the invitation, but I pass.

http://www.highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=faq#3

I keep wondering why people completely ignore the fact that the most wanted cards for banning ALL do not occur in the last GP's top 8...

If at all something must be done, then it is to nerf creature-based aggro. Unbanning balance - and banning Zuran Orb in the course (so Balance does not become Staxx cheapest Armageddon) - could be an attempt at boosting control AND combo likewise. I'd also suggest unbanning Mystical Tutor. Maybe even Vampiric Tutor... This would also solve the "problem" of explainability why Demonic Tutor is not banned. Think about it. The direction the game currently develops towards is everything else than healthy...

That's what I would expect. Exactly.

TA must be banned because Staxx is the best deck of the format
Doesn't apply any longer.

Read this. Then read it again. Then repeat the process, until you understand the obvious.

Don't.

The top 8 does not necessarily look like the most diversified regarding archetypes...

Now that's funny. Crusader is one of the absolute pioneers of Highlander. I counted him in on tournaments I organized back in 1996/97. From its very start, Crusader has been an advisory member of the HL council. You probably shouldn't be talking about experience in that way...

Combo and Control can NOT coexist as tier 1 in HL!

The years and all experience have clearly shown that rock-paper-scissors a.k.a. control-combo-aggro does NOT work in HL - simply because there's a) no sideboard in HL, b) too many different combo approaches out there (Aluren, Dreamhalls, Hulk-Flash, Angry Ghoul, Dragonstorm/TPS, Painter/Servant, Heartbeat, etc...). If all these were tier 1, or even close to tier 1, control decks CANNOT cover them all. How many cards do you want to play to battle all these approaches? And if you do, either your control matchup will be horrible or you'll simply lose against any aggressive deck. This is easy to understand!

2nd reason why tier 1 combo decks ruin the format: They disallow completely for non-blue-based midrange decks like MBC, or Rock-style decks. Both of which in my opinion allow for very much interaction and fun.

And yet you do allow proxies in the form of CE and other non tournament legal -sets. (These are not allowed by organizers in Finland any more)

In my opinion it makes a huge difference whether you have a clearly defined list of proxies - which have all been PRODUCED by WotC! - or whether you open the box of "How does a proxy have to be made?" - "Written with a soft felt pen all over it, or printed?" - "How does a tournament organizer make sure proxies cannot be 'felt' because it is thicker/thinner/, more/less bendable...?"

Apart from that - IE/CE have been legal from the very beginning of this HL 'movement' as well as all Portal sets - long before WotC allowed the latter for tournament play in Eternal Formats, even long before these were even called so. This is an absolute CORE rule of HL and in my opinion absolutely not a matter of discussion at any point in time.

In my opinion proxies should NEVER be allowed. If you can neither afford, nor borrow a card - so what? You simply don't play it! This is how our world works... almost. You can still play EVERY legal card e.g. in our online league.

If you want to play a game that's completely fair, go play chess. Those who have struggled hard and worked for their set of expensive cards should NEVER be punished by having to play vs. proxies.

Allowing proxies is nothing less than the beginning of the end of the game.

Sure we tested back in those days. It should be noteworthy that only 3 TPS players attended that GP, out of which two made Top 8!

TPS was the main reason we began to stick to a policy that would prevent combo decks from being tier 1 in HL at all. We had to hit a decision whether we wanted permission-based control and midrange decks in the format, or rather combo decks. Since HL is all about interactivity - and combo decks are the least interactive of all deck types - we concluded that we would by far have a much more fun format w/o tier one combo decks while not reducing competitiveness. Another problem with TPS is that it can literally go off with no setup other than 4 mana producing permanents on the board, which at the time will not allow a player to ever spend all his mana unless he knows the combo player's hand.

We have done almost a thousand test games at the time, and even though your arguments with alot of manaexplosion being banned now are valid, I strongly recommend to not ever allow Yawgmoth's Will back into HL unless Gifts and Intuition become banned, both of which are of huge importance for the viability of control decks!