Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 09-03-2014, 02:57:40 PM
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
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.
Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
Because of curve reasons Aggro decks need to play a low curve (many one and two drops). If one decides to build an HL aggro deck from scratch you will quickly notice that there are not that many quality cmc1 creatures around. Because of the spoils mulligan fixing the mana problems 5c (and 4c aggro as well) were taking up a very big share of the Aggro decks making other multicolor aggro decks more of a budget choice. The extent in which this happened is of course debatable. Please note that RDW has been and still is a T1 deck because the reach (burn) of the deck is so plentiful and there are also quite a few hoser cards (PoP, Moon, Ankh etc.).
I disagree on that. It's absolutely not true that decks with fewer colors have been only a budget choice. You can see that WW and RDW reached GP XI top 8, which means that it was fairly competitive as well. And there have also been enough 3 colored decks, which Vazdrus table shows.
I also think that there are enough quality CC1 creatures. But sure, it's your opinion and an opinion is never wrong.
Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
To avoid mana problems the 4c decks now need to put a bigger focus on fixing it and play a slower Midrange game to avoid having uncastable cards in hand that need be played early like Wild Nacatl. How has the use of Wild Nacatl changed in those decks. Nacatl is the best Aggro creature printed so far in the history of magic. However the 4C Blood decks of GP 13 do not play it. They can not support the colore requirements of the card that early in the games where Nacatl is best and instead decided to build a slower Midrange deck. The Naya Zoo deck (which does not have to support black) plays the Nacatl. With the spoils mulligan rules you would also have to justify why to not just play a 4c Blood Aggro list like Maqi (3rd place Gp 12) or even a 5c Aggro list. Please note I do not feel the 5c Aggro was too strong but rather limited deck building choices in the Aggro shard too much while the spoils mulligan pushed HL gameplay twoards fast-paced aggro centric game play.
The key word is that you feel, that the spoils mulligan took freedom in deck building. I feel the opposite. Whenever I build a deck today I'm noticing that its impossible to play too many high-CC or too many low-CC cards. Now it seems to be that the backbone of many more decks it the CC4 slot. You can also see this behaviour in the total played cards analysis I linked in my first post in this thread.
E.g. it's really hard to play the 6-mana Elspeth now in a deck, while this was no problem then ago. The mana curve today needs to be much more standardized (centered around CC3 and CC4) than with spoils mulligan, which absolutely takes away deck construction freedom. The spoils mulligan could be and was used in deck construction to tickle more power out of your deck, which especially ramp decks and control decks could abuse. Note that also the appearance of oath reduced quite a lot.
I still think the things that happend with spoil mulligans have been far away from being unfair. What's happening in standard and modern is much stronger.
What I'm saying is: We can't take it as the fact whether the new mulligan takes or gives freedoms, since it's determined how people feel with it.
Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
I also feel that the 4c Blood Midrange deck is slow enough to have problems against Staxx and even slower controlish decks. Especially because the free-mull will make it so, that the midrange decks can not curve out as nicely as before. This of course will have to be seen. I actually will play a BO5 with my Staxx deck against Hitman (who placed second in the Gp 13) with 4C Blood for the ladder tournament. Feel free to participate in those leagues in the future, they are a lot of fun. Please also note that Hitman did not have good 4-0 finishes in his local "FNM" tournaments with 4C Blood so the deck seems to be in line. It just was an often played and copied deck in GP 13, because people made conservative deck choices because of the mulligan change 3 months before. The three trials before GP 13 on site in Frankfurt were won by RDW, Staxx and a midrangey Multicolor deck I think.
Yes, GP XIII might be a shitty statistics sample. The next GP will show.