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[non commander]

Hey guys,

my feeling is that our beloved highlander format is slowly dying.

The first big hit for my local scene here was the creation of commander therefore a lot or more casual players moved on.

For our area (southern Germany) the major tournament organized by JK former known as GP went from a breething 1nce a year 150 player event
to a 8 person event largely because the organizer did not listen to the community and did events with hall entries and without "event" feeling
like artists lots of stores etc (hit the other formats there as well < 50 modern and legacy with hundreds before).

Now there is magic online duel commander out there as well and there is canadian highlander that got some popularity.

I think there should be a non commander competitive singleton format. But I doubt that there is room for multiple of those formats.
A couple of years ago I made the statement for the first time to try to unite the different singleton formats worldwide into 1 community driven format.

Personal I see the canadian version as the way to go because of various reasons:

- it allows any card which is why I and most of the long term highlander players I know love the format (nowhere else you see so many different cards out of the history of magic interact)
- most of the stupid discussions / conflict that we had in the european highlander format were about bannings / unbannings
  - my deck was banned
  - the card I invested in was banned
  - I have to fear my deck get's banned
  - card x should have stayed in the format
  - ...
- it also has no commander and 20 life

Someone / some of the european guy(s) may go into the canadian council and work in future on the global competitive highlander format
My recommendation is get together, start a online league / tournament to explore the format, survive.

Anyone sharing my feelings?

derStefan82 - Lulus 2:1

Sorry for late reply was away.
Agent007: derStefan82 2:1

He can't report because travelling to Asia.
He won the game.

Would like to share my opinion as well. My stronger statement will be about "Oath of Druids" and the combo situation.

I'm playing Oath forever and was the person playing it on the Volcano Cup mentioned before.

1. Oath in isolation

Oath in isolation was never a problem. It's forever in the format but never dominated the format like others did.

Playing Oath forces you to play no creatures which is a huge trade off / deck building restriction comparing to other decks.

There are various decks out there which benefit / need it, Oath Control, Oath Combo, Storm, some Artifact Combo builds.


2. Oath + Imperial Seal

With the unbanning of Imperial Seal I already feared that the discussion about banning Oath will come up again as it is the Deck benefitting most from it.

My personal feeling is that it is good for the format. Let me explain why:

I think playing a combo deck like my version is should lead to a win against pure aggro decks especially decks like RDW that have no disruption at all against combo.

But even with Seal it's not an auto win and you have to mulligan hard, and I play specific win-conditions like Dragon Breath to not give back the turn after turn 3 or yawg will / Fastbond to win directly out of Rune Scared.

So Imperial Seal makes Combo strong but probably to a strength where it should be to have Combo / Control / Aggro in sync.

If people think Oath is to Strong now probably because of Seal and sooner or later the same will apply to for example "Combo"-Reanimator or other Combo decks.

So please think about banning Seal and not Oath if you really want to ban T1/2 crazyness (and make Combo worse again).

---

Back to Basics - fine color greediness should be with a price
Blood Moon - fine color greediness should be with a price
Demonic Tutor - fine and needed for having variance of decks
Dig Through Time - blue seems pretty strong and dig / cruise are probably cards to keep an eye on
Entomb - think combo oriented reanimator decks (ooze...) have some potential to kill very fast (with seal even more)
Imperial Seal (probably the card to watch if combo gets to strong, t1 stuff gets over the top)
Mana Drain - seems ok for me, some times busted but for me cruise / dig feel harder to beat
Oath of Druids - stated above
Tainted Pact - would not ban it, will be replaced by the next best cards and goodstuff is anyway not at it's best right now
Tolarian Academy - strong but requires really specific deck building around
Treasure Cruise - see dig
Yawgmoth's Will - by far not ban worthy, beside havy combo decks not played (and even there often dead / to slow)


unban Watchlist

Gifts Ungiven
Mystical Tutor

hqme1am3

Sunday 12:00 as Main Event without round restrictions would be fine I assume.

If they make it firm.

http://series.magiccardmarket.eu/de/mkm-series-frankfurt-2018/

It seems that Highlander this year will only be a side event starting at 4 in the afternoon at the event in FFM which in good old years was the biggest tournament for us every year and in the past the GP or something like the GP.

Are you also sad to see this development?

derStefan82 - iulus 2:0

report follows

@dsck I have time on the weekend, just tell me when you are available

v772buqf

x

I could make myself available tonight. But was pretty busy last 2 weeks with brothers wedding etc.

Sorry was away till yesterday and did not find any Time.

So I'm fine giving the win to you as it's monday now.