Banned List - Comparison different HL formats

[Tabris]

"There are signals in the format right no we are concerned about. I am talking about three enchantments which can be problematic but are also neccesary for the format.Survival of the fittest, Blood Moon and Back to Basic. Also Winter Orb is a viable target for the tutor. A lof of games were decided by those cards in the last time. Since we are certain to keep those cards in the format we´ve decided to ban the card which is able to search for all of them.

We´ve also considered to unban mystical tutor but since its to powerful to search for wildfire, armageddon, gifts ungiven or mind twist at the end of turn we closed that case realy fast."

a fast translation.

edit: uh google did a good job

[Tiggupiru]

I am I the only one who thinks building 5CC with a full nonbasic suite, should be punished? I get Enlightened being problematic when Survival was on the format (I don't think E. Tutor was banworthy even then, because the real problem is the card it finds), but to justify banning of a card because it finds Blood Moon feels like saying "This card is good against decks that I want to play, so let's ban it." The lands, not least because of the five new fetches we received, are enabling practically anything you could want and not being effectively punish from that is just plain silly. Winter Orb is good card in certain decks, but if cards like that are on the format, you can prepare for it instead of just playing like it doesn't exist and blame being unlucky when it caught you off guard.

What comes to Mystical, I present the same argument: The problem is not the tutor, but the cards it finds. Mind Twist is now banned, which is really good as it's one of the better targets for EOT Mystical. Finding Gifts Ungiven is really good, but getting it via Mystical takes effectively two turns and a draw step (and Gifts is bonkers if you have the time to play it effectively). Again, Gifts is in the format, prepare for it.

I also don't understand the fear you have towards Stax. Mystical is good there, sure, but it's not like the deck is seeing much play even in bigger events and I've not seen it top8 for a long while. Has the deck been a boogie-man in the early format, because I remember other banning decisions referencing some card that is "good in Stax"? The rest of the cards in the Mystical debate: Upheaval, Wildfire and Armageddon are all cards that will not all see play in the same deck, excluding Stax. I played it in some tournament going 0-2 and I've never lost a match against it, so I really don't think the deck is nearly as good as it probably was when the format was young.

I seriously think the time when these cards were kind of problematic, is gone.

[Maqi]

I am I the only one who thinks building 5CC with a full nonbasic suite, should be punished?

Well, one appealing quality (to me at least) of the the highlander format is exactly this! The availability and viability of multicolored decks. I feel the whole format stands and falls with the amount of non-basic hate viable. Note the use of the word "viable". This is where Enlightened Tutor plays its part.

The thing is: you want non-basic hate in the format, but you don't want it te be too good (read: easily splashable/tutorable).

In this regard, Mystical Tutor is in fact even scarier than Enlightened Tutor because it gets Price of Progress.

As an aside, I'd also appreciate the unbanning of Yawgmoth's  Will.

[MarcMagic]

I think Memory Jar will get unbanned soon because its obv. not broken anymore. IMO Memjar should be able to see play for at least 6 or more months but thats not my decision. Yawgmoths Will is still easier to abuse but w/o LED its just a decent card, nothing more. Both cards have seen play in STAXX and thats the reason they are still banned.. ppl fear staxx variations because its boring/senseless to play against with casual 5C Zombies or MonoR Dwarfs. Its kinda the same with Oath of Druids. Ppl dont like to play against those archtypes so they call for moar bannings. I still hear ppl say Oath is imba although it's obv not. (even WITH LftL and Enlight. Tutor it was not).

If we take a look back to Dust Bowl, Timetwister, Power Artifact etc it was always the same. Those cards were too risky to unban. And now? Most Staxx-Decks don't even play either Dust Bowl, Timetwister or Power Artifact. Other Decktypes never did.

SotF is sth completly different which is obv at the very first look.

[Kristian]

I mostly worried that Mystical and Enlightened Tutor will pave way for more unfun decks to play against. I don't know if that'll happen, just that I wouldn't want it to :O. Both would be autoincludes in my deck, but I don't know if it'd be healthy for the format.

[Tiggupiru]

I am I the only one who thinks building 5CC with a full nonbasic suite, should be punished?

Well, one appealing quality (to me at least) of the the highlander format is exactly this! The availability and viability of multicolored decks. I feel the whole format stands and falls with the amount of non-basic hate viable. Note the use of the word "viable". This is where Enlightened Tutor plays its part.

The thing is: you want non-basic hate in the format, but you don't want it te be too good (read: easily splashable/tutorable).

If the non-basic hate is too weak or nonexistent, there is no reason not to splash anything and everything. This would result most of the decks being nearly identical 5C - decks with 15 or so slots with personal preference cards. Wizards themselves think printing Vivid lands and Reflecting Pool as mistake, because it allowed manabases that were able to support Cryptic Command, Cloudthresher and Cruel Ultimatum without any trouble. This is totally against the core principles of Magic, which is that every color has strengths and weaknesses. With perfect rainbow manabase, there are no weaknesses and all the strengths.

And besides, something like three colored decks will have NO trouble functioning with B2B or Blood Moon in play, if the manabase and curve is build with that in mind. You just can't get too greedy by splashing the last two colors or having turn one drops from all of your three colors, as long as there are things keeping that in check. 5CC is still viable even with unbanning of Enlightened and even if it weren't, they would just have to be little bit less greedy.

I think Memory Jar will get unbanned soon because its obv. not broken anymore. IMO Memjar should be able to see play for at least 6 or more months but thats not my decision. Yawgmoths Will is still easier to abuse but w/o LED its just a decent card, nothing more. Both cards have seen play in STAXX and thats the reason they are still banned.. ppl fear staxx variations because its boring/senseless to play against with casual 5C Zombies or MonoR Dwarfs. Its kinda the same with Oath of Druids. Ppl dont like to play against those archtypes so they call for moar bannings. I still hear ppl say Oath is imba although it's obv not. (even WITH LftL and Enlight. Tutor it was not).

If we take a look back to Dust Bowl, Timetwister, Power Artifact etc it was always the same. Those cards were too risky to unban. And now? Most Staxx-Decks don't even play either Dust Bowl, Timetwister or Power Artifact. Other Decktypes never did.

SotF is sth completly different which is obv at the very first look.

This pretty much exactly how I see the situation.

[Dreamer]

I want Loam back.

[God_of_War]

I am I the only one who thinks building 5CC with a full nonbasic suite, should be punished?

That's exactly my opinion. As you've pointed out, without substantial non-basic hate, everyone will just play 3-5 colors.
Every deck has to make a decision:
a) Play all the Goodies from 3-5 colors
b) Play 1-2 colors and get at most 5(!) good hate-cards (Magus of the Moon, Blood Moon, Ruination, Price of Progress, B2B)
Imo the decision is VERY clear...

Right now, there are (correct me if I am wrong) exactly 2 decks that could/would play the combination of ET+BM/B2B: Boros and UW-Control.
Another thing to realize is, that Demonic Tutor is legal, and the format is NOT degenerated because of that. With that said, I think ET-unbanning is perfectly fine. Yes, it is a good card and yes, quite a bunch of decks will play it, but that doesn't justify a banning.

The thing is: you want non-basic hate in the format, but you don't want it te be too good (read: easily splashable/tutorable)

Since when can you "splash" non-basic hate? So you play your 2C-deck and splash in red or blue? How good ist that, honestly?

In this regard, Mystical Tutor is in fact even scarier than Enlightened Tutor because it gets Price of Progress.

Aha so, you play UR-Control (does this even exist?) or are you going to "splash" that PoP in your 3C-deck again? I hope you do understand that this is not an argument at all.

I mostly worried that Mystical and Enlightened Tutor will pave way for more unfun decks to play against.

Aha, so what is "unfun"? Flash+Hulk clearly is, but ET? MT?

I don't know if that'll happen, just that I wouldn't want it to.

That's exactly what Wizards does in Legacy. We all know that Land Tax for example is perfectly fine (in HL) and it's by no means broken in Legacy (I think people wouldnt even play it but...). They have the "It's on the ban list, so it's gonna stay there because it MIGHT do something crazy, which we cant figure out and we then might look silly"-attidude.


Imo the following should be done: ET,Will,Jar should come off the list. Then if the format tends to be degenerated (after 3-6 month or so, which I highly doubt) these cards can be easily re-banned.
As a side note, Natural Order is a far more powerful card than any of those and is legal.

[Kristian]

I mostly worried that Mystical and Enlightened Tutor will pave way for more unfun decks to play against.

Aha, so what is "unfun"? Flash+Hulk clearly is, but ET? MT?

I don't know if that'll happen, just that I wouldn't want it to.

That's exactly what Wizards does in Legacy. We all know that Land Tax for example is perfectly fine (in HL) and it's by no means broken in Legacy (I think people wouldnt even play it but...). They have the "It's on the ban list, so it's gonna stay there because it MIGHT do something crazy, which we cant figure out and we then might look silly"-attidude.

I'm not allowed to be worried about my local meta getting warped into something I don't like playing in? If you read what I write, you'll understand that I'm not opposed to unbanning of cards, I'm opposed to unbanning cards that'll ruin the game for me. I'm not saying Enlightened Tutor or Mystical Tutor will do so, I just want the council to make sure they make the right decision.

[Mythrandir]

Another thing to realize is, that Demonic Tutor is legal, and the format is NOT degenerated because of that. With that said, I think ET-unbanning is perfectly fine. Yes, it is a good card and yes, quite a bunch of decks will play it, but that doesn't justify a banning.

ET is alot different from DT. The instant part is very, very powerful. Just look at personal tutor, it's available and it's rarely used.
It won't break anything by unbanning it. There's too many non hate out there, so one tutor won't make that huge difference.
Imperial seal being banned seems a lot more weird to me, at least i can't really see a huge difference between that and DT, does it enable faster combos?

[Maqi]

The thing is: you want non-basic hate in the format, but you don't want it te be too good (read: easily splashable/tutorable)

Since when can you "splash" non-basic hate? So you play your 2C-deck and splash in red or blue? How good ist that, honestly?

Maybe I wasn't accurate enough when using the word "splash". What I meant was running a hosing mana denial card in a deck, that normally doesn't focus on "prisoning" your opponent. One good example might be High Tide Combo, that runs B2B just because it wins games in its own right. Another example are Patrick Richter's decks from a year or so ago, which were 4-5c brews, that additionally packed Enlightened Tutor + B2B or Moon, so one could tutor eot, then untap and pseudo-armageddon the opponent.

In this regard, Mystical Tutor is in fact even scarier than Enlightened Tutor because it gets Price of Progress.

Aha so, you play UR-Control (does this even exist?) or are you going to "splash" that PoP in your 3C-deck again? I hope you do understand that this is not an argument at all.

Clearly both decks you mentioned - Boros and UW-Control - are much less scary than UR-Control. Maybe it doesn't exist in your meta, but Counterburn with access to eot-tutoring for PoP, Bribery, All is Dust, Rolling Earthquake or Pulse of the Forge is the real deal.

I mostly worried that Mystical and Enlightened Tutor will pave way for more unfun decks to play against.

Aha, so what is "unfun"? Flash+Hulk clearly is, but ET? MT?

Really nothing is unfun about ET and MT. However, arguably nobody would correlate "fun" with cards like PoP, B2B, Blood Moon and Natural Order.

If the non-basic hate is too weak or nonexistent, there is no reason not to splash anything and everything. This would result most of the decks being nearly identical 5C - decks with 15 or so slots with personal preference cards. Wizards themselves think printing Vivid lands and Reflecting Pool as mistake, because it allowed manabases that were able to support Cryptic Command, Cloudthresher and Cruel Ultimatum without any trouble. This is totally against the core principles of Magic, which is that every color has strengths and weaknesses. With perfect rainbow manabase, there are no weaknesses and all the strengths.

The formats where Vivid lands mattered didn't have a card pool as diverse and deep as the Highlander card pool and in no way did they have non-basic hate as good as we have. So even if 10 people decided on playing 5c, there wouldn't be the exact same 10 builds. And I'm not talking about only few metagame cards that would be different. You could design such a deck as an Oath-Control deck, as a Dream Halls Combo-Control deck, as a 5c Good Stuff deck, as a Mid-Range or even Aggro deck, Ramp-Scapeshift etc. And still this doesn't kill off lesser color builds in terms of metagame diversity. 4-5c builds must commit to one (or two) primary colors (usually green and/or blue) and cannot afford to run more than very few double+ mana cards from outside their main colors.

People keep saying you can easily just play 4-5c and encounter no problems. That is not true at all. Wasteland is often enough to cripple your game plan, as are Ajani Vengeant or Rishadan Port. Tectonic Edge is almost a staple these days.

I have the gut feeling that those arguments are based on metagames which tip on the control/combo-side of the spectrum, where games tend to last longer. Or let's be more precise: where the crucial turns that typically determine the outcome of a game take place later in the game. It is much easier to consolidate your mana base in longer, drawn out games.

So, after all that I will say ET and MT should stay on the list.

[God_of_War]

ET is alot different from DT. The instant part is very, very powerful. Just look at personal tutor, it's available and it's rarely used.
It won't break anything by unbanning it. There's too many non hate out there, so one tutor won't make that huge difference.
Imperial seal being banned seems a lot more weird to me, at least i can't really see a huge difference between that and DT, does it enable faster combos?

Being instant is indeed powerful, but getting ANY card in your hand and not on top is very, very, very poweful. Do you really want to argue about DT>>>>ET? If you want to make that comparison, take Vampiric please. Vamp gets any card at instant speed for 2 life, while DT gets the card at sorcery speed in your hand (+1 mana). The correct question should be: Should Vamp come off the list? Or DT join the list? Now everyone is gonna scream, I know...
Why is there too much non-basic hate? There are five, repeat five cards (4 being red) that hate non-basics, how can this be too much hate?
And you understand that personal tutor gets only sorcerys, so it's not a "sorcery-speed mystical"?
Regarding Imperial Seal, it's banned for money issues and that's perfectly fine imo.

One good example might be High Tide Combo, that runs B2B just because it wins games in its own right.

And what's the problem? If you play a fair amount of basics in your deck, B2B wont simply win. On the other hand, if you play like 25 or more nonbasics, then yes, you gonna lose vs that B2B and that's exactly how it should be. Lets analyze it:

1)A lot of players play a lot of non-basics
2)Some players pick up on that fact and play non-basic hate, even if it's completely anti-synergistic (e.g Tide)
Now there are two ways:
3.a)Play the same deck you always played and cry about the "bad non-basic" hate that shouldnt exist, and neither should the tutors, so you can play your deck as always
3.b)Play a deck with more basics and better mana base (maybe only 2-colored?)
4.b)Those players playin the non-basic hate will play less non-basic hate, because it aint that useful anymore
5.b)Go to step 1 again

Another example are Patrick Richter's decks from a year or so ago, which were 4-5c brews, that additionally packed Enlightened Tutor + B2B or Moon, so one could tutor eot, then untap and pseudo-armageddon the opponent.

Ok, so one guy played some rogue decks that played ET+B2B/Moon, does this prove anything at all? How many other decks follow this strategy?

Clearly both decks you mentioned - Boros and UW-Control - are much less scary than UR-Control. Maybe it doesn't exist in your meta, but Counterburn with access to eot-tutoring for PoP, Bribery, All is Dust, Rolling Earthquake or Pulse of the Forge is the real deal.

I havent seen any Counterburn list yet, so maybe you can post/link one? At the moment I cant really tell how good that deck is becase I've never seen it.

Wasteland is often enough to cripple your game plan, as are Ajani Vengeant or Rishadan Port. Tectonic Edge is almost a staple these days.

I wont comment on Ajani, but on Wasteland:
Lets take a look at Legacy: What keeps mana bases "in check"? Answer: Wasteland. Now there's a huge difference, because having 4/60 or 1/100 is not even close. So this argument is not true for HL. You wont play vs tripple Wasteland to destroy your shaky mana base. Wasteland is one card out of 100. If Loam was unbanned things would look way much different obviously. (Im not saying Loam should be unbanned, dont get me wrong)
The thing is, Wasteland does not hose 3-5C strategies, its rather an "utility" land which randomly kills other utility lands, cuts someone off a color or sets both players back a turn.

[Tiggupiru]

Woah. This conversation got derailed pretty bad. This is the last thing I am going to say about nonbasics:

I really don't see why you are so hung up on the ET being a problematic nonbasic hater when it's essentially a Back to Basics / Blood Moon that costs four and gives you -1 card advantage. In addition, you can't even play it on the turn you draw it. I also happen know it's more versatile than that, but your only argument against it is that this very bad Back to Basics, is in danger of making 5 colored deck way worse. If this were the case, those decks would be in some serious problems when Wizards prints another three mana variant of non-basic hate. You are clearly campaigning against B2B, Blood Moon and Price of Progress, which these cards happen to find, not the tutors themselves.

Besides, even if these unbannings would make non-basics bad or atleast significantly worse (which they wouldn't), it also would make two-colored and monocolored strategies more viable as they are immune to hate cards, so it's not like the format suddenly would go narrower.

I also am full aware that there are no Vivid Pool manabases in HL, but I brought it up to give a clear example why these things should matter.

[Maggot]

I believe that the banning of the tutors is ok.
Actually as much as I would like playing them in my UW Control, I don´t want to play against them in a Staxx or Prison deck.
Giving those decks multiple copies of their "don´t you wanna conceed" options, would be terribad. (Smokestack, Winter Orb (wich should be banned), Upheavel, Moat, etc)
Giving Pattern Rector two copies of Natural Order (wich should be banned) and Pattern of Rebirth is just insane.
The crucial part of those tutors is the instant speed, it allows the player the wait for the right moment to find either the win option or the game breaker for the current situation.
The argument that those cards are banned because they enable non basic hate decks is imo a little strange, because there is one deck that specialised in this field. The truth is that these cards would make good decks a whole lot better. ET and MT favor Control, Combo and Denial decks and give them an adge against Aggro decks wich is not ok omo.

Btw if a resolved B2B/BM/PoP always ends the Game, you should reconsider your build or your playstyle.

Just my two cents...

[Maggot]

Actually I have another question:

Why is Timetwister legal and Wheel of Fortune isn´t, or vis versa...?