Banned List - Comparison different HL formats

[Maqi]

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

Because Wheel is insane in Mono R and Timetwister is not...

Additionally, filling up your grave leads to more broken plays, while emptying graves prevents brokenness.

[Mythrandir]

Regarding Imperial Seal, it's banned for money issues and that's perfectly fine imo.

Money issues? I thought that wasn't a reson to ban card! Just look at workshop, mana drain, LoA (while it was unbanned) and TIMETWISTER! Also ravages of war is pretty expensive. So i'm guessing money wasn't the reason...

And i well aware that personal is only sorcery fetcher, but if it was at instant speed, it would see heavy play, believe me!

Not to throw more wood into the fire, but there's clearly more nonbasic hate than just 4 cards.
Anyway i played with ET unbanned/banned and i don't noticed any major changes, it wasn't broken, but i guess i got over it being banned.

[pyyhttu]

Money issues? I thought that wasn't a reson to ban card!

I doubt whether a card's price has earlier on been *solely* a decisive factor, but I can imagine it has helped making the decision on Imperial Seal. See Sturmgott's answer to form your understanding: http://magicplayer.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=896&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=16

Once again it's in German, but babel/google/bing translation should help you out.

[Mythrandir]

Money issues? I thought that wasn't a reson to ban card!

I doubt whether a card's price has earlier on been *solely* a decisive factor, but I can imagine it has helped making the decision on Imperial Seal. See Sturmgott's answer to form your understanding: http://magicplayer.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=896&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=16

Once again it's in German, but babel/google/bing translation should help you out.

Indeed. Availability (aka, money issue) was a factor on banning. Well, that's weird, they should just ban the entire PK3, that would make it a lot easier, IMO and more consistent.

[God_of_War]

Because Wheel is insane in Mono R and Timetwister is not...

Is RDW really such a threat? And is Wheel really an I-Win-Card? Maybe vs control but vs aggro (Naya,WW,Boros...) I highly doubt it.

Not to throw more wood into the fire, but there's clearly more nonbasic hate than just 4 cards.

First, I said 5 and second take a look:
http://www.magiccards.info/query?q=o%3Anonbasic&s=cmc&v=card&p=1
40 cards all together that have the word "nonbasic" and I wont analyze them all, but it can be easily figured which are playable/junk etc.

Anyway i played with ET unbanned/banned and i don't noticed any major changes, it wasn't broken, but i guess i got over it being banned.

That's my opinion.

[Helle]

Well, that's weird, they should just ban the entire PK3, that would make it a lot easier, IMO and more consistent.

Most cards of the set being played are functional reprints. So the original cards already are available in the format. In my oppinion, those cards interfere with the "there can be only one" clause of the format. If you want to play Armageddon, Earthquake, Wildfire etc. as a 4-of, you can switch to other constructed formats. The reduced redundancy is what makes highlander special to me.

As the set wasn't planned to reach the european/american market ever, it's card to get your hands on those cards. Combined with the fact, that those cards aren't really needed (no decktype is base on one of the cards/mechanics), I absolutely agree with Mythrandir to take out the entire set.

[Tiggupiru]

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)

So, you really don't want to play against Staxx and because of this, those cards should be banned? This goes well with the points I stated earlier, the deck is not nearly as good as people credit it and just because you don't like playing against it, doesn't mean it's correct to ban a card that is not a problem. You can also use MT and ET to find answers to the above cards. It's not an one-sided deal.

Banning Winter Orb is like the WTF of the century. I've seen games where someone dies to his own Orb, despite playing it (in my opinion, at least) correctly. You can easily prepare for a card like that by adding more pressure to the board, which makes the WO unattractive to play. You can play more artifact acceleration in your control deck, you can avoid tapping out when it's not absolutely needed... etc. It's really good card, but sometimes it's just a dead draw or too risky to play, because the board is even.

Giving Pattern Rector two copies of Natural Order (wich should be banned) and Pattern of Rebirth is just insane.

I am unsure if you want blue in that deck, but MT would be a decent fit in it if that were the case. The same goes for the ET, it's good, but it's not pushing the deck into a new level or anything. It just replaces the worst tutor currently in the deck (and the deck is full of them) with somewhat better, but very limited, seeing as Pattern is the worst combo piece you could have.

ET and MT favor Control, Combo and Denial decks and give them an adge against Aggro decks wich is not ok omo.

You want Winter Orb banned, which is one of the better weapons aggro can have against combo/control, but don't want cards (that aggro can also use, no less), because they are good against them? WW for example would *love* to have Enlightened Tutor at their disposal.

[derStefan82]

@Portal: If you say that P3K should be banned because of functional reprints, I think you still have a problem with the other Portals and Wizards Strategy of building functional reprints in new editions like Savannah Lion / Elite Vanguard etc.
Banning Ravages of War would give 4/5-C decks another boost and on the other side it would availible playable decks like WW and Staxx which are still not in best position.
What's about Rolling Earthquake, Sea Drake, Imperial Recruiter, etc. you would loose all of them by banning Portal.
So I personal think if we have a discussion if this fits into the Highlanderformat it has to be should we allow only one copy of a functional reprinted card at all.
If we do this it would be very easy from the banlist perspective, if we do the other way round, banning all functional reprints and add any new to the banlist we will
end up with a huge banlist.
In both cases it will end up with big effort for TO's checking the decklists (first case much more) and I think it's questionable if this is necessary.
But again if the argument is it's feeling weird to have multiple copies of one card in a highlander deck there should be only one functional reprint of any card, otherwise it's not really consistent.
Of course you should not forget all this players which spend lot of time to get their copies of P3K cards for huge amount of money which will be annoyed that they can't play them anymore.
I think on ban/unban LoA there were lot of discussions about that afterwards.

By the way, I can play full power 9 in Singleton and Commander?

[Sturmgott]

Seems like most people advocating the unbanning of Yawgmoth's Will haven't played at the time it actually WAS unbanned. TPS is just too much of a powerhouse if Will AND Gifts is allowed.

See these decklists:

http://magicplayer.org/?id=GP2Top8&deck=GP2Top8Platz5
http://magicplayer.org/?id=GP2Top8&deck=GP2Top8Platz4

We have done excessive testing on TPS builds, and also playtested alot of stuff against it and easily came to the conclusion, that this deck is

a) way too fast,
b) much too hard to interrupt, even if you have a good opening hand vs. it.

TPS ruins the metagame since it forces control decks to sacrifice too many slots to be able to battle it and thus worsen its matchups vs. either aggro or other control decks. This basically leads to control becoming non-viable.

Don't open that box of Pandora again!

[God_of_War]

When did you test TPS? Back in 2006 or 2010/11?
Quite a lot of things have changed since then:

a)LED banned. This is huge. Consider the following Gifts pile: LED,Will,Recoup,Ritual which is very good vs any deck that doesnt play counters. Without LED Gifts and Will get a lot weaker.
b)Burning wish is effectivly banned
c)Lots of very decent graveyard hate has been printed since then and could be played easily (without sacrificing anything in the other matchups). Right now (most) people dont play any graveyard hate at all.
d)Academy is banned.
e)Mana Vault is banned.

So TPS lost a bunch of very good mana producing cards. Another thing to realize is the fact, that in the last 4 years a lot of good/very good creatures have been printed, while basicly no (playable) tutors (correct me if Im wrong). Therefore the powerlevel of the creature-based decks has risen significantly, while TPS powerlevel didnt.
And the last thing I want to mention about TPS is, that this deck made 2 slots in 1HL GP (not even place 1 and 2!), that's at least imo perfectly fine.

Another interesting would be to read something about:
1)Mystical Tutor
2)Enlightened Tutor
3)Demonic Tutor (in comparison to ET/MT/Imperial Seal)
4)Memory Jar
5)Wheel of Fortune
from a member of the HL council and the reasoning behind.

[Sturmgott]

Sure we tested back in those days. It should be noteworthy that only 3 TPS players attended that GP, out of which two made Top 8!

TPS was the main reason we began to stick to a policy that would prevent combo decks from being tier 1 in HL at all. We had to hit a decision whether we wanted permission-based control and midrange decks in the format, or rather combo decks. Since HL is all about interactivity - and combo decks are the least interactive of all deck types - we concluded that we would by far have a much more fun format w/o tier one combo decks while not reducing competitiveness. Another problem with TPS is that it can literally go off with no setup other than 4 mana producing permanents on the board, which at the time will not allow a player to ever spend all his mana unless he knows the combo player's hand.

We have done almost a thousand test games at the time, and even though your arguments with alot of manaexplosion being banned now are valid, I strongly recommend to not ever allow Yawgmoth's Will back into HL unless Gifts and Intuition become banned, both of which are of huge importance for the viability of control decks!

[Mythrandir]

@Portal: If you say that P3K should be banned because of functional reprints, I think you still have a problem with the other Portals and Wizards Strategy of building functional reprints in new editions like Savannah Lion / Elite Vanguard etc.
Banning Ravages of War would give 4/5-C decks another boost and on the other side it would availible playable decks like WW and Staxx which are still not in best position.
What's about Rolling Earthquake, Sea Drake, Imperial Recruiter, etc. you would loose all of them by banning Portal.
So I personal think if we have a discussion if this fits into the Highlanderformat it has to be should we allow only one copy of a functional reprinted card at all.
If we do this it would be very easy from the banlist perspective, if we do the other way round, banning all functional reprints and add any new to the banlist we will
end up with a huge banlist.
In both cases it will end up with big effort for TO's checking the decklists (first case much more) and I think it's questionable if this is necessary.
But again if the argument is it's feeling weird to have multiple copies of one card in a highlander deck there should be only one functional reprint of any card, otherwise it's not really consistent.
Of course you should not forget all this players which spend lot of time to get their copies of P3K cards for huge amount of money which will be annoyed that they can't play them anymore.
I think on ban/unban LoA there were lot of discussions about that afterwards.

By the way, I can play full power 9 in Singleton and Commander?

I say it's more consistent to ban the whole set, just because of availability. This was, at least, one of the reasons to ban Imperial, however every single card from that set is incredibly expensive and hard to get. Specially if you consider functional reprints. And ok, imperial is a new card, sea drake is a new card, but when you think of it, giving 100€ for a ravage of war when you have geddon that usually costs 7-10€ is a bit steep, IMO.
And yes, i don't like functional reprints, i think they make the format worse (personal opinion) however, things like elite vanguard/lions are easily available.

Just like holiday promos (e.g. fruitcake elemental) there's no real reason to ban these other than availability.

[GoblinPiledriver]

All holiday promos are silver-borderd Fun Cards so they need to be banned just like every other silver-bordered Unglued or Unhinged card.

List of all holiday promos:
Fruitcake Elemental
Gifts Given
Evil Presents
Season's Beatings
Snow Mercy       (need to be banned to)

[Mythrandir]

All holiday promos are silver-borderd Fun Cards so they need to be banned just like every other silver-bordered Unglued or Unhinged card.

List of all holiday promos:
Fruitcake Elemental
Gifts Given
Evil Presents
Season's Beatings
Snow Mercy       (need to be banned to)

I mentioned these because unlike unhinged and unglued, these can be easily transformed into playable cards.  Some easier than others...
And i don't think these are banned because of silver-bordered... but because they are "funny" and hard to get. Fruitcake elemental has nothing wrong with it in terms of rules. I was merely illustrating availability = banning.

BTW, insteadoff just banning each card that appears in "holiday form" it would just be easier to say: Silver borded cards are banned..." Then there would be no need to keep updating that list.

[MarcMagic]

Functional reprints allow ppl to build decks around some specific strategy. I like it because if you don't like them you don't have to play them. You can play WW without Armageddon, play 1 rnd Armageddon or even add Ravages of War. So its up to you whether you want to build your deck around 2 geddon effect, 1 or none. I think one bad but at the same time good thing of highlander is it "randomness". It is fun to play lots of different cards (without lands: ~60 different cards instead of standard with ~15 different cards) but having no sideboard and those small factor to get specific cards its nice to have another cool card which works very well with your deck etc.. but that's just my opinion. And the only reason for me to ban cards is the power lvl. If there are decks which are clearly imba because of 1 card, this card should not be able to see play anymore. Best example is Flash Hulk. But banning cards for money reason is bullshit.. okay, imperial seal has been banned since loooong ago. This fucking card costs 250 Euro and does nothing in other formats  (ofc there are some vintage decks which play it as another copy of vampiric tutor..) and is even worse than another card which is banned. Imperial seal wouldn't be banned today its just still on the list and there is no reason to remove it imo. I think ppl shall just play other decks when they can't get some cards. It was mentioned 100 times, Highlander is like 1:100 and not 4:60 so missing 1 expensive card won't ruin the entire deck. If you cannot play w/o this card then just build another deck. I mean look at standard, 4 jaces in almost every blue deck.. thats 280+ Euro for 4 cards and it is STANDARD. I don't think we should blame Highlander for these few expensive cards or ban cards for this reason : ).