Hey.
Jan here, I was mentioned before. Thanks for all the effort, this is an interesting summary of the recent play during these odd times. While I must say that I actually agree with many of the observations you made and I think the summary of decktypes is pretty adequate and great to have, I still have some questions and some things I'd like to point out.
One question that I hope can be answered easily: How many different players took part in the aforementioned tournaments?
This seems important to me. If we are going to try to compare this data to say the last Continental Cup (which is likely the highest level of competition our format has) with approximately 90 players and 7 rounds (so something like 315 matches, not counting IDs) it would be good to know how often players switched decks during the Corona age tournaments. Because switching decks does make a difference regarding play level ad well, since many players take months to really master decks.
Also I feel forced to state that with the little amount of play and possibility for players from all communities to join larger competitions in the recent months there might have never been a worse time in the history of the Highlander format to talk about or seriously consider bans. I understand the urge. And I also feel like Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are very good cards that many people believe to be problems. Yet: Neither the Council nor the community (or God beware both together) have to this day any idea or outline as to why we should ban certain cards and what we want to achieve. We have also recently had a drastic mulligan change which in my opinion factors way more into the state of the format than banning ... say 4 cards. I personally believe it has made Highlander much more random and reduced the influence of skill on the outcome of games. But maybe that's what we want. Yet: The promised outline doesn't exist. We do not know why we do anything. Maybe most of the community enjoys more randomness. Maybe the best players have less fun with the new mulligan. Who knows? Maybe an eternal format needs to get over the fact that Blue is the best color ... because if we seriously try to weaken it, boy that might take a lot of bans. Either way: I hope we can find ways to broaden and tighten the competition even with this new Corona world we live in. I believe that to be much more urgent than bans and I will focus on it. For the meantime: If you haven't read it I can only point to my years-old attempt of an outline for the format again. It didn't consider a new mulligan that causes more randomness. It didn't factor in if this should be a casual and random or a skilled and competitive format. It should have. But until we know these things ... and have bigger sample sizes again, I am afraid any ban conversation is completely useless. I did enjoy the read and will read again though. Maybe we can just keep observing a little more for a while instead of pushing change buttons out of sheer helplessness. That would be my wish. Keep up the great work though. And I do hope to face that Oracle Breach (kinda fitting name to the state of the format actually) deck in full extent soon.
Jan here, I was mentioned before. Thanks for all the effort, this is an interesting summary of the recent play during these odd times. While I must say that I actually agree with many of the observations you made and I think the summary of decktypes is pretty adequate and great to have, I still have some questions and some things I'd like to point out.
One question that I hope can be answered easily: How many different players took part in the aforementioned tournaments?
This seems important to me. If we are going to try to compare this data to say the last Continental Cup (which is likely the highest level of competition our format has) with approximately 90 players and 7 rounds (so something like 315 matches, not counting IDs) it would be good to know how often players switched decks during the Corona age tournaments. Because switching decks does make a difference regarding play level ad well, since many players take months to really master decks.
Also I feel forced to state that with the little amount of play and possibility for players from all communities to join larger competitions in the recent months there might have never been a worse time in the history of the Highlander format to talk about or seriously consider bans. I understand the urge. And I also feel like Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are very good cards that many people believe to be problems. Yet: Neither the Council nor the community (or God beware both together) have to this day any idea or outline as to why we should ban certain cards and what we want to achieve. We have also recently had a drastic mulligan change which in my opinion factors way more into the state of the format than banning ... say 4 cards. I personally believe it has made Highlander much more random and reduced the influence of skill on the outcome of games. But maybe that's what we want. Yet: The promised outline doesn't exist. We do not know why we do anything. Maybe most of the community enjoys more randomness. Maybe the best players have less fun with the new mulligan. Who knows? Maybe an eternal format needs to get over the fact that Blue is the best color ... because if we seriously try to weaken it, boy that might take a lot of bans. Either way: I hope we can find ways to broaden and tighten the competition even with this new Corona world we live in. I believe that to be much more urgent than bans and I will focus on it. For the meantime: If you haven't read it I can only point to my years-old attempt of an outline for the format again. It didn't consider a new mulligan that causes more randomness. It didn't factor in if this should be a casual and random or a skilled and competitive format. It should have. But until we know these things ... and have bigger sample sizes again, I am afraid any ban conversation is completely useless. I did enjoy the read and will read again though. Maybe we can just keep observing a little more for a while instead of pushing change buttons out of sheer helplessness. That would be my wish. Keep up the great work though. And I do hope to face that Oracle Breach (kinda fitting name to the state of the format actually) deck in full extent soon.
