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[and this is important, they don't take sideboard slots]

Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding the Learn-mechanic: This has been asked previously and we weren't interested in at that time to change the rules and introducing sideboards into Highlander. Mind that this is also in line with other formats without sideboards. See https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/1375151063020359685?lang=en and https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/2021/04/12/2021-april-update-strixhaven/

As for Dungeons: Based on what is known now of the mechanic, I don't see a reason why Dungeons couldn't be used. The key phrase here is this from that linked video: "Now Dungeons. They don't go into the deck. You can keep them in your sideboard, but, and this is important, they don't take sideboard slots. You just have access to them. And you bring them in to the game when you venture into the dungeon."

Commander, where sideboards are also not permitted, has landed into similar conclusions: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/o7220z/sheldon_confirms_dungeons_are_commander_legal/

I hope you are considering this idea and disuss it.

I'll make sure there's an announcement regarding this, and while waiting for the official rules on Dungeons, I opened a discussion point on this on the council boards. They'll chime in on there, if not here.

What I said above, is just my personal opinion.

My last Idea was never talked about is still good. Allow a one card Sideboard.

I haven't seen this idea of yours. Could you elaborate on it, what are the potential pros/cons of it and what else than Learn-mechanic are you set to solve with it?

As with Companions, same applies to Learn mechanic: Highlander does not have a sideboard, which Learn requires. We should not make an exception to this rule because of Learn. If you want to play Learn, you'll have to convince the community to adopt sideboards.

This survey was handed out in the area around NRW as a online version in June 2019.

Could you paste or pm me the link to this survey? I'd like to review it, and perhaps run here in Finland. Thanks.

Will also link for these forums to read this: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/london-mulligan-2019-06-03

London mulligan will become official for all formats from Core Set 2020 release, July 12, 2019. WotC's Rationale on the change, testing process, learnings and the future outlined in that above article, it's about 5 min read.

Standardization is not the hurdle our format has.

It's not, but it weights something as it's seen as potential improvement. Especially when WotC wrote after 6 months of testing:

"Some members of the community have suggested introducing the London mulligan on a format-by-format basis, but, as designers, we feel strongly that having one unified mulligan rule for all of Magic is the right path forward. Many Magic players try out a variety of different formats over their lifetime, and having inconsistent mulligan rules across those formats would be a substantial added complexity cost."

I think we should at least give this a benefit of doubt and start testing this same mulligan.

Nevertheless, the community is discussion this topic again. In english. -> Facebook -> European Highlander group

OK, good that discussion there is ongoing. Facebook as a social network is not set for me.

Finnish community responded quite unanimously that if the London mulligan is embraced with the official rules, the same should be applied, or at least tried with Highlander. Reasoning was, that the standardization of mulligan rule helps to govern the rules, which would make it easier especially for new players to embrace the rules.

Another point made was that the current "free mulligan" rule encourages to shuffle back hands which would otherwise be "semi-ok" or "playable", so this "extra shuffling" portion would now be cut off. So using the mulligan, just because it's "free", shouldn't be the inherent part of the game, which it has now become. Applying mulligan to starting hands in Highlander, compared to other sanctioned formats was deemed higher.

Hats off for trying this out. The results are varied, although positively open, encouraging to take this further. I started the discussion back at Finnish community to gather the feedback there.

When there are tournaments in near future at Helsinki, I'll propose to try that London mulligan out.

After interviewing all participants, I tried to make it somehow clear arranged.

What was the question set you used? I could perhaps utilize the same in order to get coherent results.

Important: WE did not test the London Mulligan only, but a combination of our currently used Free Mulligan PLUS the London Mulligan after that. So it replaced the Scry Option in our currently Mulligan combination of Free Mulligan PLUS Scry Mulligan.

Just that I understand this correctly: if players decided to mulligan, they would first apply the free 7 mulligan, and only after that, instead of going down to six, they would take their first London mulligan instead?

If so, curious to hear why not just applying the London mulligan?

Deleted the account. Posts are retained. Deleted the spam though; no need to post those to get attention.

and why the fuck is it necessary to confirm your deletion from an admin xD "that doesn't make sense!

It's a sane safety valve and by default on in SMF so that no-one deletes an account in accident.

Agreed. Tournament organizers and judges would also absolutely *love* that.

And we actually experimented with 70 min rounds back in 2008 in Ropecon. Winner was determined at 2 am. Here's blast from the past: https://mtgsuomi.fi/keskustelu/index.php?topic=49289.msg200958#msg200958 (sorry, in Finnish).

[fifty minutes]

Finnish nationals were held a week ago mid July, and the following discussion was raised by a participating player:



Currently http://highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=hinweise says: The recommended round-time for tournament best-of-three-matches is fifty minutes.

So should the recommended round time be changed to 60 minutes, and if yes, why?

Note that tournament organizers are still able to introduce any deviation from the recommended time limits, but they must be announced prior the registration.

Give us in the comments your well rationalized reasoning for either of the options, so the council can weigh in the pros and cons of them. Thanks!

I'm interested in following up how the power level increase will affect the format. Gut feeling is that it is for the better.

Forum statistics (IP) shows that majority of registrants (non-bots) are outside Germany country IP range. Also, German language only would make the community more secular and make lurking impossible (for foreign users).

Finnish community voiced their guidelines, comprised well into this post: https://mtgsuomi.fi/keskustelu/index.php?topic=71161.msg376090#msg376090

That thread "Tulevat Highlanderbannit - mielipiteitä tutoreista" roughly translates into: "Highlander bans - opinions about tutors are welcome"

So we approached the question from the tutor standpoint: what is deemed too strong, what should stay or go in current meta, role of keycards vs. tutors and so on.

Core message, formulated by Nastaboi from the answers was:

*SNIP*
Demonic and Mystical should stay in the format. If Imperial Seal is to be unbanned, tutor ban list is then, from the standpoint of tutor power level, consistent. And having Demonic as the strongest tutor in the format is OK. If tutor based decks after this start to somehow overly dominating (combo), then Demonic could be banned, and Seal left to format.
*SNIP*

Mystical was never deemed as a problem. We voted accordingly with Nastaboi: Entomb and Imperial unbanned.

Only difference was, that I wanted to shorten the watchlist, as I see, that cards now are kept too easily in there --> watchlist is constantly growing.

Where's the source code of that deck database? No thanks. If it's not open, we would be jumping from one proprietary solution to another and repeat the same mistakes again.

While the official 1 vs. 1 commander may not resemble highlander much, Wizards has started to post daily league 5-0 lists, starting from this date onward:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/commander-constructed-league-2017-05-11

Why I bring this forth, is because it may give some brewers and idea what synergies there are and what to maybe experiment in this format.

Albeit they have more strict banlist and comparing Commander to Highlander is like apples vs. oranges debate, I hope results from mtgo hivemind may give someone a hint of cards that certain archetypes use, and you may have forgotten in your build process.