Messages

like "the effect is random"..i dont even know how to respond to it, when it untaps it gives you tons of options..i dont know whats "random" about it.

It's random in the sense that the pool of cards you can tutor from is based on the random pile of cards that is your hand.

or "when he connects you are already ahead and its win more"? when i play this and you play thalia or even a bigger two drop and i remove it in my turn (thalia doesnt even have to be removed/example) and i attack (which is a common scenario), then i am not ahead in a way where the transmute doesnt matter.

This scenario is based on quite a lot of assumptions: that you have removal, that my creature can be removed with that removal, that you're on the play, that I only have one creature that threatens to kill the Disciple, that I don't have removal and don't draw it during my next turn... These are all at least equally as common scenarios as the one you described.

or "he doesnt do anything when you are behind"..it costs 2 mana!! which 2 mana creature will turn a game upside down etc when you are behind.

Well, these comparisons might be a bit silly, but since you asked: Stoneforge Mystic, Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Pack Rat. These are the ones I could think of at the top of my head that have the potential to turn the game around when you're behind. Depending on the situation potentially more (like playing Phyrexian Revoker or Vampire Hexmage on the opponent's planeswalker that is dominating the board).

when you want to make a card look bad i guess you can with unreasonable arguments. again.."if somebody milled away your only two equipments, stoneforge wont find one, dont forget that!". when it comes to evaluating a card coming up with a unlikely scenario (only 4 drop in hand, 2 cards of 2 different manacosts is WAY more likely) that makes a card look bad is not the solution. i am not even sure what you mean by desperately handling a planeswalker? jace ultimate, liliana ultimate? in those games you already are so far behind and obv havent done much the last turns.. if thats the case AND you only have 4 drop THEN YES THE DISCIPLE WONT SAVE YOU (the card doesnt say "i win you the game no matter how far behind you are"). magic is more than about answers, when he has jace and i would rather get dsphere but cant, then i get a jace myself, face power with power is another kind of answer. tutoring in highlander for 0 freakin mana in a realistic scenario (2-3 different kinds of manacost) is incredibly powerful. i wanna say "there is no arguing about that", but apparently there is.

I don't know how it is for you, but unless my opponent is on 5 life or so, a planeswalker always needs to be removed as quickly as possible, and not just if it threatens ulti. I also think you are missing my point. I am not saying tutoring every turn isn't good, but the effect is too random to be an autowin against combo or even a "must-remove threat" against control, especially considering that it is hard to keep going, especially if you are the slightest bit behind (a 3-power creature on your opponent's side would already be enough in most cases). You can't really rely on it to do anything when you really need it to do something (aka when you're behind), and when you're ahead, the effect is just "win more" anyway. Most of the time this will be a 1/3 dork with minimal impact on the game. If you think that's worth playing, fine.

I'm not saying it will never be relevant, but it will be in much less situations than you think it will. Let's say you have a 4-Drop, but you desperately need to kill your opponent's planeswalker and the only answers you have for that cost 3. The effect is great for cycling away dead cards, and in most cases, yes, you will find something that might be better suited for the situation, but consistently finding answers for your opponent's threats is a whole different story. And on an empty board which is probably when the trigger will happen most often since the Disciple can then attack freely, you are either already winning or you have no idea what your opponent has up its sleeve, so you can't always tell whether or not you should transmute.

The problem with the Disciple in my opinion is not that it doesn't trigger consistently, but that you are limited in your search options by what's in your hand. The prospect of tutoring for an answer each turn against combo seems pretty utopic to me because of this. You can't really guarantee you will find an answer, because you can't reliably tutor for something specific with it. Therefore I can imagine the trigger being more or less irrelevant many times. It will only ever be consistently good in situations where any other card of the same cost would be better than what you have in your hand (cycling away removal against combo/control for example).

Dakra Mystic on the other hand is a very underrated card with a lot of potential in my opinion. Yes, the body is irrelevant and the ability costs you mana, but that is the case with other good creatures too, like Grim Lavamancer or Deathrite Shaman. Now admittedly, these two have way better effects, but the Mystic's is pretty decent too. It's a low cost creature that draws you extra cards, and while it does that for your opponent too, you also have the option to deny him essential topdecks, which in our largely topdeck-reliant meta and in the light of the Mystical Tutor-Unban doesn't seem too shabby. Additionally, it's a nice skill-testing card, one that isn't perfectly easy to use, but can have a huge upside if used correctly. For me, this is the real sleeper of the set and it's a shame how undervalued it seems to be.

Niclas 12 White Weenie
Dennis 10 Izzet Control
Jan 9 White Weenie
Jonny 7 Esper Midrange
Malte 6 RG Beats
Oliver 6 
Tobias 6 4c Midrange
Christopher 6 Mono G Ramp
Cedric 3 5c Junk
Luca 3 UWR Twin
Daniel 3 4c Control
Max 0 Mono G Aggro

Niclas 12 Mono B Suicide
Georg 9 GBW Rock
Christoph 9 UW Tempo
Jonny 9 Esper Midrange
Luca 6 URW Twin
Tino 6 GBW Rock
Daniel 6 Maverick
Leon 6 Mono G Midrange
Malte 3 UW Tempo
Daniel 3 
Tobias 3 Mono G Aggro

Nr. 1 List: http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/16495#232304

Also what I would like to know is how others are feeling about the perception that the metagame is very topdeck dependant. In my experience a lot of games are solely decided on topdecking better. Questionable keeps and bad top decks make games lopsided. Is no one else experiencing this?

What the Free Mulligan does is it allows you to come back from a rather sketchy hand more easily. I have won more games keeping a hand with one or five lands than I did with the Spoils Mulligan, and having the right topdeck early on can help you with that, but even then I can't really see how that would have given me an advantage. If I keep such a bad hand, I can relatively safely assume that my opponent has kept something better. If anything, that lucky topdeck has made the game more even in such a situation. As for topdecks later in the game, when both players have kept a relatively equal quality hand, I can't really say that the games are decided by lucky topdecks more than before. It could be that the games are now longer, giving both players more time to have one, which leads to this experience.

I play in Berlin on a regular basis, talk to other players about the metagame almost daily and lucked myself to a top 8 finnish in Hanau although I am not from Mannheim.

This is my experiences:

1) Control decks used to clearly win most tournaments in Berlin before the rule change. Now they never win although we have some very good control players and they try.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

2) There used to be many competitive combo decks and ramp decks. Now they do not exist anymore or lose all the time. People stop playing them, which is sad to see.
My opinion: The free mulligan has caused this.

3) There is one deck strategies I see constantly succeed now and it's midrange. 4-color, 2-color and some mono color builds. Essentially they all try to get along with the inconsistency of the mulligan the best. I assume tolarian academy decks are good but even those did nothing in Berlin, although played by good players.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

I'm sorry I have to disagree with you on some of your assessments of the Berlin meta:

1) I see the reduced dominance of control decks in our meta as a good thing. Before the Free Mulligan, control-ish decks were far too dominant and it's actually a breath of fresh air to see something else win now. And that the Free Mulligan caused the control decks to lose more often can't really be true either. After the change, at least 80% of the tournaments in October, November and December here were still won by control (most of the time Tolarian decks, which according to you "did nothing"), and even if something else won, there was still at least one control deck in the top 3. It's only been recently since the control decks haven't won that much anymore, but if that was caused by the Free Mulligan, how is it possible that they still won close to every tournament for three months after the change?

2) I agree with you on that. Especially combo decks seem to have been hit hard by the mulligan change, and when I see a combo deck nowadays, it's usually at the bottom of the table.

3) I can't really argue with that, as there was a slight increase in midrange strategies here recently. But that's not because everything else doesn't work anymore. The only reason I think I was able to win a couple of tournaments lately was because I wasn't paired against hard control decks, as my control matchup is abysmal. If my opponent plays something like Vedalken Shackles or Propaganda, it's usually game over for me, as I have no way of removing them. Additionally, the players that played midrange-ish strategies now are mostly the same ones that already played midrange-ish strategies with spoils and in the three months where control was still winning a lot after the mulligan change.

[1.]

It's been a few months of Highlander play with the changed mulligan-rule. The previous posts prove that tournament results might not be the right way to evaluate whether the drastic mulligan rule change has done and will do the format good or not. It's just too easy to say ,,we don't have enough results yet" (will we ever?).

I agree with you that tournament results are not the right way to evaluate the impact of the new mulligan, at least not entirely, since its no real indicator for the change in gaming experience (more/less mulligans, screws, floods, random topdeck wins, one-sided games etc.). The problem however is this: What else is there? People's experiences of playing with the new mulligan vary drastically, as everyone considers something else "fun" or "interactive". As such, we get way too much entirely subjective views on the mulligan, based on everyone's personal experience.  All we have right now is one opinion against another, without much hard evidence to back up either one of them (I'm talking about statistics here). Making too hasty of a decision will leave a huge chunk of players disappointed (taking this poll as measure at least 40-60% of the players, depending on the decision) and the debate might start again in the future, so as I see it, at this point, we have two options:

1. We have to statistically prove once and for all whether or not the goals of the Free Mulligan were achieved. For this we need more time, as we will need to analyze the results of more large tournaments. Tournament results should give a good impression of what decks are played and how good they are, and should serve as a good tool for evaluating deck diversity. The problem here is that there are too few large Highlander tournaments. Since the introduction of the new mulligan, we only had 3 with more than 30 players, and the local metas are too different and less competitive to really be taken into consideration as a major factor. 3 tournaments are not enough however to copletely evaluate the impact of the Free Mulligan on the development of the meta. There were many decks in Magic's history that were only relevant for a few tournaments and then faded into obscurity. We need more tournaments to see whether or not a deck has staying power in the format or is just a short-lived trend.

Screws, floods, mulligans, random topdeck wins and one-sided games are not as easy to evaluate objectively. One way we could do it however is by reviewing game footage with and without spoils to statistically evaluate, how much more often they really occur. Thanks to Tabris, we already have a large library of games with a lot of different decks both with and without spoils (The games on Cockatrice might not be optimal, as you can only see one player's hand, but it may still work). Reviewing them could give us some hard numbers on how often these things really occurred then and now, but it also takes time and probably can't be done until the next banning season.

2. We find a third solution that everyone can agree on. Other mulligan options like taking a Free Mulligan in the first and a Spoil Mulligan in the second and third game of a match, a limited Spoil Mulligan that allows only 2 cards to be put back, or the Overdraw might provide a nice compromise. Testing them would be a whole different story though, and changing the mulligan rule this often might confuse newer players.

If there's something that bothers me right now in the Highlander community, it's not that I really prefer one Mulligan or the other, it's this sheer endless debate. I love this format and I really don't want to see the community being torn apart because of this petty conflict.

[A]

There hasn't ever been a card in Magic I was less sure about than True-Name Nemesis. Control decks usually shouldn't have that much of a problem with it, just like combo decks. Aggressive decks however face a big problem with it. Unless you have evasive creatures or one of the few removal spells that can deal with it without also killing your own creatures (all of which are black as far as I know), its nearly impossible to race, since it can just stall indefinately until its controller has stabilized, at which point it can safely start attacking without ever being blocked. But is that enough to justify banning it? I would say no. It certainly is a very good card that can lead to random wins, but that's also true for other cards that are allowed. It hasn't led to an increase in blue decks played as far as I can tell (let's face it, at least half of the decks played before its release played blue anyway), and not every blue deck plays one. I don't think it has made enough of an impact on the format yet to warrant a ban, but it should certainly be kept on the watchlist. For now, I vote for A

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). 

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.

Niclas 10 Mono B Suicide Midrange
Luca 9 Boros Twin
Jan 9 Naya Aggro
Christoph 9 UW Tempo
Cedric 6 Jund
Thomas 6 Bant Midrange
Malte 4 4c Blood
Tobias 3 UB Midrange
Leon 3 Mono G Midrange
Markus 1 UW Midrange

Jonny 4 UB Control (Drop)

Niclas 12 MonoB Suicide Midrange
Luca 9 UW Ephara-Tempo
Dennis 9 Izzet Control
Christoph 6 4c Aggro
Laura 6 RDW
Malte 6 White Weenie
Tobias 6 4c Midrange
Oliver 6 Naya
Patrick 3 Jund Midrange
Cedric 3 UGW Enchantress
Stephan 3 BUG Oath
Tobias 3 4c Goodstuff

[Don't ban Sensei's Divinig Top!]

Don't ban Sensei's Divinig Top!

I've honestly never understood the "time consuming" argument. Yes, a slow player might take a bit to rearrange his cards with the Top, but that's the same as with other library-manipulation cards like Sylvan Library, Mirri's Guile, Brainstorm, Preordain etc. A slow player has a higher chance of timing out regardless of whether or not he uses the Top, and most players I know don't play slow enough to make using the Top an issue. It's a good card, but not totally oppressive. Certainly not powerful enough to be banned. It also provides a bit of library manipulation to decks that usually wouldn't have access to it (aka decks that don't play blue and/or green), and taking it away from these decks might further limit their viability, shift the color distribution of the decks played further towards Blue and Green and limit deck diversity. It would also make combo decks a bit less consistent. Sensei's Divining Top is an important part of the format and banning it would be a bad idea.