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Hey thanks for digging that up!

When has this changed? I might just remember poorly but I think that at least some years ago the highlander-rule affected the Rats also. I don't really remember how this works in singleton.

you need a certain amount of experience and need to be a premium caliber player to be able to notice that.

[Expedition Envoy]

Expedition Envoy
W
Creature - Human Scout Ally
2/1

I thought I'd mention this one because it is yet another 2/1 for one mana. I was of the opinion that - once there were enough those one-drops - aggro might be viable again. I am no longer of that opinion.

Magic has shifted away from non-red aggro over the course of the last years and this is not a HL-only phenomenon. Midrange creatures have gotten just so much better than aggro creatures and are still very fast when battling against control. There is almost no reason to go pure aggro anymore because your midrange matchup is horrendous and your control matchup is not even that good. Especially green-based midrange will go toe to toe with aggro one-drops by just deploying elves instead. I'd rather have a t3-board of Llanowar Elves, Anafenza, Siege Rhino than Expedition Envoy, Savannah Lions, Mardu Woe-Reaper, Honor of the Pure.

That being said, I'd like to get proven wrong and if there is a viable dedicated white one-drop aggro deck then this is surely in.

Rating: unplayable or 4 – Archetype Staple

Well I played nayazoo (well ok, it has some red cards too) in this year's Finnish champs and lost in top8. After that the same deck with a few adjustments has been played in two other smaller scale tournaments by two different players and went undefeated in both. So like I have said before, if a deck is not played in highlander, it doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. It might be just that there's not a proper build around. Then again I do think ww is very bad but still some people play it with moderate success.

One card not mentioned here is Coercive Portal which is quite an upgrade compared to previous card drawing artifacts like Grafted Skullcap and Bottled Cloister.

As nastaboi pointed out UW has very good matchup against fast aggro. As I have said before, control decks greatly benefit from the mulligan change. And I can't really see how aggro decks could compete at the moment against the monster of a deck the uw currently is. Unbanning of Mystical was just the last nail. Actually so much that we realized in testing that full set of wrath effects aren't really needed (see Soloviev's list).

As for 4c blood, well, it just loses to back to basics and even to it's own impossible manabase.

As for teching against control mirrors. Loam was indeed considered, but that would either mean adding a color or cutting one. What would you cut? Green doesn't really give anything else. Then again you can see decisions like cutting wog effects, playing more counters, cutting bribery and even playing predict. Again, what kind of decisions would you make to improve mirrors without worsening other matchups too much?

Why are you tony always getting so mad? People are just discussing about a card that is hard to evaluate properly. You are right about 1/3 being a lot better than 2/2 in this case though.

The card is probably very good in a spesific deck but it's not some kind of ultimate format breaker or even playable in very many archetypes. Coolest deck I've built so far with Disciple is a Grixis-Splinter Twin-aggrocontrol that looks quite funny on paper. But due to recent changes in the banned list the format is heading very heavily blue direction. Historically fish decks tend to do well against combo and control and Disciple is the ultimate fish. Control decks are just so good right now with the new mulligan, True Name Nemesis and Mystical Tutor that winning will be hard for the tempo and aggrocontrol decks.

disciple of deceit is the big sleeper here. that card will turn out to be very good.

Sorry but no, unless you have some mad tech in mind. Without support, it needs three turns and two cards to get even a single restricted tutor effect. Not very effective.

I think you are looking at it wrong. It's not reliable card in any random deck, but it'll shine in an aggro-control. This isn't a card for combo or straight up control decks simply because they lack the cards to allow it to attack with any reliably.

I also think the card has potential to become really, really good, but that requires the surrounding deck to be competitive, since this card doesn't make an archetype viable all by itself. If that deck doesn't not fly, neither does Disciple and we never hear from it again. That is the very potential pitfall with this card since it's kinda of a one-trick pony. But man, the trick is pretty darn good one.

Well it might make the cut in some kind of grixis-delver type deck but even there I'd rather have pain seer and I'm not sure if even that has room.

disciple of deceit is the big sleeper here. that card will turn out to be very good.

Sorry but no, unless you have some mad tech in mind. Without support, it needs three turns and two cards to get even a single restricted tutor effect. Not very effective.

Yes if there were more actual Wastelands available in the card pool the problem would not be as severe as playing around these cards would increase your chances of winning. As there are only 1 Wasteland in each deck, you never should mulligan your hand if it was otherwise keepable but loses to Wasteland. On the other hand you should definitely build your deck with the aforementioned hate cards (B2B, moon etc.) in mind and play around those cards. Wasteland is just a card that randomly gets you even if you had the perfect two color manabase but suddenly can't play around it due to inherent random nature of the game. In this format Wasteland is just too close a Strip Mine that it's not fun

This represents a whole vein of thinking that compares HL directly to the 4 of formats. It isn't. The 1-of nature will lead to blowouts with a comparatively higher chance than in the regular formats. You have to embrace this, because on the other side of the coin are the bannings. If you get annoyed with seemingly random blowouts (nonbasic hosers, drain on 3 mana spell + followup, academy start etc.) there is no end to the banlist, until you banned all the older cards with a high powerlevel.
If you play too few lands then you will run into the 2 land hands more often than not. But this comes with the trade for more bussiness. But I guess I don't have to tell you this.

If anything there are way too many cards on the banlist. P9 + fast mana belongs there, but not much else, in my opinion.
OR and that is also a viable route: Ban all the high power cards, e.g. academy, oath, drain, demonic, worldly, eladamri, and so on. This will ultimately lead to a meta like goodstuff vs izzet vs rdw vs GU/x. Combo will almost disappear except for creature based ones, but without the tutors it won't be as good as before.

Where do you draw the line between good or bad for the format? Do pricetags come into view aswell?

Edit: I meant blowouts will feel more awkward, cause of the 1-of a kind.

Just to clarify, I have no problem with Moons, B2B or Mana Drain or powerful cards in general. Like I have already stated Wasteland is an autoinclude. Other powerful cards all have spesific conditions under which they work and you can prepare for them. If someone plays a mountain, you should prepare to face non-basic hate. If your opponent plays Island, you should prepare for counter magic in general, Mana Drain being of course the one with most blow out potential. And even then those cards are spells and require mana, those are factors that can be easily disrupted which is not the case with Wasteland.

Control got weakened by the free mulligan simply because it gets to easily lucked out by fast starts as the control player must sometimes keep a hand with too many lategame cards and or special synergy cards etc. It is way harder to play control decks now than it was before this is a simple fact carved into stone that nether you or anyone else can denie.

But there are less those lucky fast starts because aggro decks can't always fix their curve and they get more punished from having clunky starting hands than control decks. Just play control, it's actually easier than ever!

i completely agree with tabris on this. if there was no 4-of wasteland in legacy, every deck would play 5 colors. there should actually be more wastelands in highlander. and i really don't mean to be offensive, but i cannot take anyone's opinion seriously, who only asks for cards for their deck to be unbanned and for cards they hate playing against to be banned.

try to look at the bigger picture. i did considerably well in hanau and i'm still very unhappy with the direction the meta is taking since the rule change. stop being so fucking selfish, please. i don't wanna have to move to victoria.

Yes if there were more actual Wastelands available in the card pool the problem would not be as severe as playing around these cards would increase your chances of winning. As there are only 1 Wasteland in each deck, you never should mulligan your hand if it was otherwise keepable but loses to Wasteland. On the other hand you should definitely build your deck with the aforementioned hate cards (B2B, moon etc.) in mind and play around those cards. Wasteland is just a card that randomly gets you even if you had the perfect two color manabase but suddenly can't play around it due to inherent random nature of the game. In this format Wasteland is just too close a Strip Mine that it's not fun

And to make one thing clear. The higher amount of control decks is in no way connected to the free mulligan, it is obviously because of the tolarian unban which is a good thing. Without cards like academy or oath there would be no reason to play any type of control deck besides soft u/r nonbasic hate.

This in fact is a false conclusion as free mulligan (compared to spoils) greatly benefits decks that are less dependent on perfect mana curve.

Name/Nick: Aleksi Väänänen/so_not

How do you rate the banned-list on a scale from 1 to 10 (1=poor, 10=great)?
5

Which mulligan-rule do you prefer?
Free Mulligan

How do you rate the free mulligan on a scale from 1 to 10?
At the moment I thinks it's a perfect 10.

How often do you play Highlander (mp.org-rules)
several times weekly

Which cards are missing on the banned-list and why? (max. the 5 most important ones)
These 5 are the cards that create the most degenerate games. This means that whenever one of these cards is involved in the game, it totally controls the way the game is played out. Some of these are actually so stupid that they completely wipe out many otherwise playable archtypes. You really don't want to play any sort of midrange deck if your opponents are having Titans, Wurmcoils, Griselbargains, Marit Lages and Mindslavers during early turns or creating an army of thopter tokens each game.

Tolarian Academy - This card is way more powerful than any other card in the format. I guess the reason why Academy decks haven't rose as a dominant force yet is that not enough players are making the effort to build the best academy deck. Also decks in general are pretty powerful these days and have the necessary tools (disruption+fast clock) to compete academy decks. In our meta many players dedicate time in building academy decks of various styles and although they are still probably far from perfect, the games involving this card are totally random and it's just really stupid card. To its defence I must say that Academy mirrors are hilarious. See this event for example where things are heading: http://mtgpulse.com/event/15302#214530

Oath of Druids - This is perfect example for the aforementioned degenerateness. Yes you must commit your whole deck to it, but that doesn't change the fact that it makes games very random. For the aggro players it's a very frustrating card to play against and probably should change the meta a lot more than it currently is. See this list for example: http://mtgpulse.com/event/14411#204248

Wasteland - The card that causes the most random wins in the whole format and also an auto include in EVERY deck. There are also no good arguments for this card to be legal. If you need a land that destroys non basic lands, you can definitely use Tectonic Edge or Dust Bowl but that really really is not what this card is used most of the time. Mostly it's just a random screw card and the ultimate random screw card it is.

True-Name Nemesis - Oh well, this have just been introduced to the format but it's yet another reason why you should stay away from creatures and just do unfair things.

Sensei's Divining Top - Yes better player probably gets a bigger advantage with this but it's not very hard to top, fetch, top, draw, top etc. over and over again. It just makes playing less interesting and more frustrating.

Highlander banned-list

•   Tolarian Academy

Might want to fix this.