Input required - Banning of the Fetchlands

[Tiggupiru]

I don't like that fetchlands make splashing too easy and decks too similar, but right now I can see no solution to the problem.

I don't know either how to make splashing more difficult. It's basically the same thing in Legacy.
Splashing a second color became considerable more easier after the second cycle of fetchlands were introduced along Zendikar. So maybe they just have to be accepted as part of the game, and the players themselves should take the iniative to rectify this by playing more reactive LD when possible (Shadow of Doubt, Aven Mindcensor, Bind...).

I guess they made splash in Legacy easier, but it was quite easy with the old fetches anyway. One huge difference is that Legacy does have Wasteland keeping things in check, and that is a pretty big reason not to play more than two colors.

Metagaming against fetches out is going to be rather hard, but I really like the fact that Wizards have tendency to print good creatures to punish fetchlands (Aven Mindcensor, Leonin Arbiter), so I guess it's possible. I mean, they are everywhere.

[Ball.Lightning]

I also dislike the idea of banning fetches. Most main reasons against bannings have been were written above.

I would like to point quite different angle of perspection. The banning of these cards could easily stop new players to enter the format(kill the format in long perspective). I come from Czech Republic and it promote this format anyplace and anywhere. Since this format has so far realy reasonable banned list, it is not so complicated to explain to players, that play HL without banned list, that Tinker or Balance,.. are too much screwing the game, to be fun. Even though there are MORE vintage HL players in my area than this version of HL. They feel like restricted and wanna play insane cards. Since new players don't own Power 9 or any expensive cards, it make no trouble to them to play with banned list, that calls Black Lotus to be banned. Also banned list has more casual and friendly feeling.

The problem with fetches is that it is legal on all other Highlander formats - EDH, MTGO, vintage HL (and most importantly on Legacy) - so if new player came to see, that fetches are banned, they would definetely feel like "What a stupid format is that?" and deny to participate.

Question at the end:
How dangerous is 8-10 fetchlands in 100 cards - when most legacy decks play 12 fetches in 60 cards?

[Scalpelexis]

Hi!

First of all, I would like to introduce myself. I am, as my fellow friend Ball.Lightning, also from the Czech Republic and I do participate a lot in the Highlander community around. I was informed on this problem and I would like to have a humble opinion on this too.

It is easy to perceive, that any reasonable deck, which plays 2 a more colours, is going to use fetch lands. Even a 2-color deck can use up to 7 fetch lands to make sure of not stumbling on mana problems or at least to minimize it. Just this fact is already quite absurd, but it is a basic sum up of all the reasons, why fetches are so busted. Is there any reason not to use them? No, not even a glimpse of it. I read a few posts above, that fetching is skill intensive. Oh, okay, for a 5C deck it is important, which dual land you are gonna find and when, but c'mon, is it that difficult? I'm against such opinion; fetch lands make our lifes such a lot easier, mainly during construction of our decks. If it wouldn't be for fetch lands, 3c decks wouldn't have such a stabile manabase as they do and I might wouldn't think of constructing any. 4C decks wouldn't exist in my opinion without fetches. Of course, the variability  of decks would drop down. However, as for me, I am not a huge fan of seeing a turn 2 Vexing Shusher followed up by a Turn 3 Stillmoon Cavalier (just a random example). If, again, it wouldn't be for fetches, these 2 creature wouldn'T have almost any chance of appearing in one deck together.

So, what is the solution? As many people wrote above, there just ain't any simple one. Actually there might not be any as a matter of fact. Banning fetch lands is not going to help. They are no cards, that win you the game on their won, they don't provide you any ridiculous card advantage and they do not deal any damage to your opponent. Errata is just not possible too. I do like more 1C and 2C decks, because it is just more natural, more than those 4C monstrosities packed with the best cards from every colour and like 30 tutors. With that on my mind I can't agree with any sort of ban, cause it won't help make the field more insteresting and fun.

If you got used to play against decks fueled with the 10-fetch package, then sure, you might get ultimatelly bored and you could argue, that the field ain't much changing cause of this. I do not think so. I still do believe, that there are much more different decks than for example in Legacy and how often I do hear that Legacy is such a variable format all in all.

So..don't do it, please. The negative impact would be much more bigger than the positive one; of that I'm sure.

[VariSami]

I might be completely wrong about this but in case what one might call nutty manabases for multiple colours are a problem, is the main problem really fetching? As in, fetching does indeed thin down your deck (a bit) and but it also only fetches you one of two possible basic lands - unless we count in Ravnica and the original duals. This situation turns every fetchland into a "choose between two duals" in any deck multiple colour deck, right? I recently came along a 5c-deck that used no basic lands but every dual and fetchland possible. I heard it had cost 3000€ to build.
So, what I am getting at here is: is the problem actually the existence of fetchlands - or the existence of strictly superior dual-lands? And by strictly superior I do mean "better in every way conceivable":
1. They enter the field untapped.
2. There is no cost to using them.
3. There is no condition to using them.
4. They have the "basic land types" -subtypes - which makes them fetchable.
Now, I actually have nothing against Ravnica duals: they have a choice attached: pain or tapped. So basically you are to choose between two handicaps listed above. But I do have a problem with the old duals. It might be on a personal level (although, having played for only a relatively short time, I have only come across them online), and so, I accept the possibility of being misconceived.
Now then, for all I know, there are many possible explanations as to why those cards should not be banned. I am merely pointing out how they are probably a bigger problem than fetchlands - maybe except in the case of time usage - and should be considered for banning prior to them. But let's see if I have grasped anything about the reasons for which those cards probably should not be banned:
1. They're acceptable in all other eternal formats.
Well, I find this an inadequate reason for anything. Yes, there might be practical reasons concerning the player base: people might want to be able to play them, and they would choose any format over the one in which they could bot do that. But the fact remains: even if something has always been, it does not mean that things could not be otherwise and still better.
2. You can only play one of each of them.
This is taking my speculation even further. But I have seen arguments like these in Highlander discussion. It's simply funny how such arguments can be applied to any card, considering the rules, so if they were to be accepted in any given case, then there would actually be no justification for a ban list. Since you could only play one of each of the broken cards (excuding tutors -which is exactly what fetchlands do for these duals). Not to mention that there are quite a few of these cards in total, if one is playing three or more colours.
3. They are healthy for a multi-colour meta-encironment.
Well, of course the best multicolor lands there are will always remain the best possible choices for people using multiple colours. But I see it as more of a problem: perfectly fine multiple colour lands are simply trampled by their presence. More balanced ones, you could say. Since they have the balancing handicaps I listed above (tapped, cost, condition, hardly tutorable).

Here's one thing on my behalf strictly against them, though:
They are expensive. They might not be like the Power 9, but they are still indeed strictly superior to their descendants. And they are old - their price will only be going up, especially with everyone in Legacy and Vintage lusting after a playset of whatever they need. For what I've understood, this is a sufficient reason for banning in some cases, although the duals have not been deemed as too expensive thus far.
I'd still like to be myself clear on this: people capable of affording duals have strictly superior manabases. It creates an imbalance, although I suppose I do need to accept as a fact that most of the best cards can be pricey. So one could argue that if you cannot or will not afford them, you are playing the wrong game. But that would seem simply a bit too elitist for the future of the game in general.

So, this is indeed strictly no call to ban the duals but I hope that I am making a point: rather the duals than the fetches.

[Mythrandir]

I might be completely wrong about this but in case what one might call nutty manabases for multiple colours are a problem, is the main problem really fetching? As in, fetching does indeed thin down your deck (a bit) and but it also only fetches you one of two possible basic lands - unless we count in Ravnica and the original duals. This situation turns every fetchland into a "choose between two duals" in any deck multiple colour deck, right? I recently came along a 5c-deck that used no basic lands but every dual and fetchland possible. I heard it had cost 3000€ to build.
So, what I am getting at here is: is the problem actually the existence of fetchlands - or the existence of strictly superior dual-lands? And by strictly superior I do mean "better in every way conceivable":
1. They enter the field untapped.
2. There is no cost to using them.
3. There is no condition to using them.
4. They have the "basic land types" -subtypes - which makes them fetchable.
Now, I actually have nothing against Ravnica duals: they have a choice attached: pain or tapped. So basically you are to choose between two handicaps listed above. But I do have a problem with the old duals. It might be on a personal level (although, having played for only a relatively short time, I have only come across them online), and so, I accept the possibility of being misconceived.
Now then, for all I know, there are many possible explanations as to why those cards should not be banned. I am merely pointing out how they are probably a bigger problem than fetchlands - maybe except in the case of time usage - and should be considered for banning prior to them. But let's see if I have grasped anything about the reasons for which those cards probably should not be banned:
1. They're acceptable in all other eternal formats.
Well, I find this an inadequate reason for anything. Yes, there might be practical reasons concerning the player base: people might want to be able to play them, and they would choose any format over the one in which they could bot do that. But the fact remains: even if something has always been, it does not mean that things could not be otherwise and still better.
2. You can only play one of each of them.
This is taking my speculation even further. But I have seen arguments like these in Highlander discussion. It's simply funny how such arguments can be applied to any card, considering the rules, so if they were to be accepted in any given case, then there would actually be no justification for a ban list. Since you could only play one of each of the broken cards (excuding tutors -which is exactly what fetchlands do for these duals). Not to mention that there are quite a few of these cards in total, if one is playing three or more colours.
3. They are healthy for a multi-colour meta-encironment.
Well, of course the best multicolor lands there are will always remain the best possible choices for people using multiple colours. But I see it as more of a problem: perfectly fine multiple colour lands are simply trampled by their presence. More balanced ones, you could say. Since they have the balancing handicaps I listed above (tapped, cost, condition, hardly tutorable).

Here's one thing on my behalf strictly against them, though:
They are expensive. They might not be like the Power 9, but they are still indeed strictly superior to their descendants. And they are old - their price will only be going up, especially with everyone in Legacy and Vintage lusting after a playset of whatever they need. For what I've understood, this is a sufficient reason for banning in some cases, although the duals have not been deemed as too expensive thus far.
I'd still like to be myself clear on this: people capable of affording duals have strictly superior manabases. It creates an imbalance, although I suppose I do need to accept as a fact that most of the best cards can be pricey. So one could argue that if you cannot or will not afford them, you are playing the wrong game. But that would seem simply a bit too elitist for the future of the game in general.

So, this is indeed strictly no call to ban the duals but I hope that I am making a point: rather the duals than the fetches.

Well, there are loads of things which i really don't agree. all just make points, here goes:

1)all duals, all fetches makes for a 5cc an easy target for aggro + nonbaisc hate.
2) over 3000€? yes, probably. Just add jace, mana drain, goyf, duals, etc... This might sound snobish, but if you don't have the money, play with something else, RDW is a lot cheaper (and probably even better than a 5cc)
3) again, jace costs more than some duals...
4( right now, with fetchs, shockslands, m10 duals, etc, etc, nothing having old duals doesn't necessary mean auto-loss
5) I see several 5c lists without the full dual sets
6) fetches shuffles your deck, creates time issues, duals don't. (not saying fetches should ban, though)
7) if you pack your deck with 10 ftechs + basics you really aren't that off vs a deck with duals.
again, some ppl even prefer having the full fetch set, ratehr than the duals (again, not saying fetches should be banned)
9) they aren't that expensive compared to other cards (ravages of war, mana drain, jace...) and they are a good investment since you can pu them into "every deck" unlike some specific cards (e.g timetwister..)
10) you can still be competitive in our format without the full dual sets

I know some points are repetitive, but i really never thought of someone playing a dual and i'm going "OMG, what now?... etc.." so, banning duals never really crossed my mind.

[VariSami]

Yup, even I was not serious about that. I'm quite sure I said that it was supposed to be something of a comparison between fetches and duals in the sense of banworthiness. Basically, the point was not "let's ban duals" it was "don't ban fetches before duals". I believe the fetchlands will probably never be banned anyway, though, but I still wanted to make my opinion on that clear.

P.S. I play GG Ramp. So, yeah - going with a semi-budget deck, which has no need for duals. I think the price-tag problem might not be nearly as bad here as in Legacy (and Vintage) for example. Good point about the existence of Jace and co.. I'm pretty sure he used him - and Mishra's Workshop and Moat and the like. So maybe the duals were not nearly the biggest money drain (although all combined, it does make for quite a sum).

[Tiggupiru]

I've decided to necro this as I've given this a whole lot of thought lately and since people have been talking about decrease of players in tournaments, I think this could be a way to shake things up.

I don't know exactly why the tournament attendance is dwindling, but the reason to my interest plummeting is that everyone are playing the same cards. Like, if you play Bant or BUG, the difference of these lists are still like a maximum of 20 cards, at least if you plan to just do well and have no personal bias towards certain archetype or a card. We just have too many of good cards and color issues are actually not issues at all. It has become near impossible to brew a different deck that is both optimal and has unique cards. Blue-green aggro-control for example is just way too clunky when you can just add white and play Bant, which gives you access to Stoneforge, removal, Geist of Saint Traft and what else. You can play UG if you so wish, but you are not optimal at that point. Right now, there is no downside of adding black with Demonic being the only black card to your two-colored deck and that is not something I don't enjoy doing. I do think it's easily the optimal solution, but I sometimes decide against it as I don't find that is what Garfield had in mind or what Wizards currently think and I agree with them. In tournaments I do that though, since I play to win and I always feel my deck gets better with that. Without the fetches though, splashing for a card, no matter how good, is actually a choice. Control might want to do it anway, but faster decks cannot just freeroll it.

Blood Moon and Back to Basics are not good enough to punish people for playing all duals and fetches. They come on turn three and at that point they have no more fetches and if they have a hand that can play around those enchantments and wastelands, they easily can. Like, how many Back to Basics have there been in recent top eights of serious tournaments? Five this year. None of those lists won and of those one was Bant and one was 4-color deck trying to Armageddon both players. Blood Moon count? Three. People aren't getting punished by being greedy and the reason for this is: By playing Blood Moon or Back to Basics, you are diluting your deck by playing one or two colors in a format where splashing is super easy. Not only that, but there are matchups where these enchantments are near dead and certainly not worth of a card and three mana you need to invest and like I said, they can play around that with the fetches. So, you need to make your deck worse and still accept that the silver bullet trump card can be dead. They are also pretty horrible when you are behind on board. Not to mention, most decks that play those have no tutors for them. So, seeing them at all is like one in a five or six games and when those decks naturally draw them, well better hope they actually do something. The whole, "let's Armageddon us" approach seems pretty good, though. On the other hand, I really don't think format is healthy when that sounds like a good idea. Banning fetches, archetypes would become more different since you cannot just play the best cards of three colors and have to adapt.

Fetchland ban would also help against aggro problem as they would be unable to run 15 perfect lands (draw any two of these and you don't have to worry about color requirements) which would make them more inconsistent and would drop value of their cards in favor of cards that aren't as good, but can be reliably cast to keep the pressure up. No more reliable Wild Nacatls into second turn Lightning Helix. Control would just add more cheap library manipulation to combat this and they don't even need to have all their colors early anyway, so this would actually give control a little edge. And that would make two colored controls a thing. I don't know if that would even the odds, but aggro is by far the deck type that has most to lose with this and if that is considered to be a problem, well this could do something about that.

Another benefit of this is that it would shorten the gap between budget players and optimal builds. Having no access to Underground Sea is way, way less relevant when you don't have 8 fetches that can find it. Replacing it with a Darkslick Shores or Drowned Catacomb becomes perfectly reasonable and maybe even optimal if having a basic land type is a liability. Time problems in tournaments would also be pretty significant as this would make Sensei's Divining Top a fair card and most decks would stop playing it, saving even more time in the process. And since bans are for tournament purposes only, this is a pretty good thing. Demonic is a card I would ban in a heartbeat, unless this ban happens and splashing for it becomes hard enough not to do it all the time. It still might not, but one can dream.

Of course, there are another side of the coin as well. If you want to keep the banlist as short as possible, this isn't exactly accomplishing that. That was originally my biggest concern, but giving it more though, in a casual format the fun and diversity are much, much more important. To me at least. Especially now when ELO-ratings are gone and people who care about that stuff can play in "real" formats. There just isn't reason to play this format unless it's more fun than other formats because this is not good value for money.

This could phase out some decks (mostly 4-5 colored ones), which is a bit shame, but considering the fact that these monstrosities exist in the first place, I don't think that would be all bad news. Besides, you could still play multicolored cards and four colored decks, but you would have to give the manabase serious thought and just accept that some duals are not as good as they are now. I would love to see more Sungrass Praeries in tournaments.

Anyways, I am merely proposing a solution to do something about the loss of interest. I might be the only one who feels that these are problems, which is totally fine and in that case you shouldn't obviously do it. I just wanted to express how I feel and why I really don't care about this format as much as I used to. I probably still keep playing in bigger tournaments, but deck brewing seems like a wasted time to me, which was by far the biggest reason for me to play this format.

[so_not]

stuff

+1. I don't know if it was the same format any more but this would make deck building a whole lot more interesting.

[Dreamer]

To reiterate from earlier:

I think the fetch-dual manabase is a design problem in one very significant way. Think about how manabases scale with money invested:

Basics: Durable, fast, poor multicolor support.
Taplands: Fragile, slow, excellent multicolor support.
Duals (typed or not): Fragile, fast, good multicolor support.
Fetchlands + basics: Durable, fast, mediocre multicolor support.
Fetchlands + duals with basic backup: Durable, fast, insane multicolor support.

Durability in this case refers to the manabase's ability to stand against hate. The dual-fetchland manabase is absolutely atrocious in this regard, especially because alpha-beta duals don't need to be cracked at EoT (terramorphic-style) like Ravnica shocklands to avoid pain. Now you can wait, wait, wait, oh, he played Moon, crack fetches for basics, nice Moon you got there. Essentially, there's no deckbuilding choices to be made, just money to be thrown at the problem.

Plus, of course, there's the matter of 5c aggro and "just because I can" splashes. Neither fetches or typed duals are necessarily terribly problematic by themselves. But together, they produce a manabase that is all upside, no downside, and make possible quite painless, durable and fast 3-colour manabases, without 4/5-colour ones suffering much either. They're more fragile due to having to fetch a few more duals, but they're still very fast with stupidly good multicolor support. The only manabase crazier than that was the Vivid-Pool one from Lorwyn-era Standard, but it at least was slow as hell. This isn't.

In short, there's no choice, only more and more money to spend (to the point of madness) if you can afford it. Yeah, it's radical. But not really a bad idea, either.

I still stand by that and think that trying a no-fetchland environment would be a pretty rad thing. Manabases would require more thought, if you wanted multicolour with resilience to hate you'd have to invest in green ramp or mana stones. And who knows, it might be more fun to play too. My only concern is that this might hurt Pattern-Rector, which is the only reason I still play Magic. But that deck is green and has tons of mana dorks and land fetching so it might survive, I hope...

[Doks]

I don't know exactly why the tournament attendance is dwindling, but the reason to my interest plummeting is that everyone are playing the same cards. Like, if you play Bant or BUG, the difference of these lists are still like a maximum of 20 cards, at least if you plan to just do well and have no personal bias towards certain archetype or a card. We just have too many of good cards and color issues are actually not issues at all. It has become near impossible to brew a different deck that is both optimal and has unique cards. Blue-green aggro-control for example is just way too clunky when you can just add white and play Bant, which gives you access to Stoneforge, removal, Geist of Saint Traft and what else. You can play UG if you so wish, but you are not optimal at that point. Right now, there is no downside of adding black with Demonic being the only black card to your two-colored deck and that is not something I don't enjoy doing. I do think it's easily the optimal solution, but I sometimes decide against it as I don't find that is what Garfield had in mind or what Wizards currently think and I agree with them. In tournaments I do that though, since I play to win and I always feel my deck gets better with that. Without the fetches though, splashing for a card, no matter how good, is actually a choice. Control might want to do it anway, but faster decks cannot just freeroll it.

That is the point. MMD just posted the results of Dortmund's Highlander from 08.07.2012. Top3 is 3x 4-5 colour Goodstuff with slight differences in splash colour choices.

However, I could now argue and sometimes agree, sometimes disagree with your statements, but I really only have one main concern that people have to remember:


With all the suggestions we had in the past (including this suggestion to ban fetchlands), we are only fighting the symptoms, but not the cause. I like your term "five colour monstrosity", but this is only the result of a deeper cause which is the power level of creeps and WotC losing sight of the colour wheel's definition.


In the long history of magic, pure aggro strategies usually had 1-2 colours (mono red sligh or Rx Goblins for example) because these two colours gave them everything they needed. Or ancient hybrid aggro-control decks like Grow-A-Tog with Quirion Dryad used 3 (sometimes 4 but very rarely) colours. 1-2 for the control aspect, 1-2 for the aggro aspect.

Now, what do we have today?

A traditionally reactive and classic colour combination like UW now gets a freaking CMC 3 hexproof creature that hits for 6 (!) and puts on a 3-4 turn clock (Geist of Saint Traft)?

Card advantage is no longer restricted to certain colours or conditional draw in non-typical colours (like good old Overwhelming Instinct) but now comes with a 3/2 haste body that brings a friend to put even more pressure on your opponent (Bloodbraid Elf).


And while there are tons of new creatures that find their way into the Highlander creature based decks because they just bring so much to the table, there are only so few solutions in the traditional control colours to them at the same powerlevel which is why even control oriented decks tend to play creatures themselves.


Okay, this was nothing new, but a quick reminder is necessary for my statements regarding the fetchlands.

Let's assume fetchlands are banned. I agree with you that it would hit the colour variety for each archetype. 5C Alara aggro might degenerate to a base combination of RG and a splash (probably white to make it Naya). 4-5C Goodstuff would probably become Bant as R and B were only slight splash colours for Goodstuff type decks.

But I do think that with the classic dual lands and all those filterlands and conditional dual lands (those that come into play tapped if you control more than 2 other lands or if you don't control a certain basic land type etc.) a 3 colour manabase then will be as stable as a 4-5C manabase with fetchlands today.

I agree with you again that less colours will mean less powerful but rather castable creatures which in theory sounds good because it will definetely weaken those decks and opens up space for new additions.


But in fact, let's have a look what happens to control oriented decks. As I pointed out earlier, they only have a limited pool of viable answers to the flood of simply super strong creatures. These control decks will get even more restricted in their choice of weapons if they can't support the mana requirements just in time which is crucial if you play the reactive part.


As an example, let's say the former 4C Goodstuff deck cuts red (and now is Bant) because there are no fetchlands anymore. Now it will simply replace Bloodbraid Elf with good old Loxodon Hierarch. Or New Dungeon Geists. Or New Restoration Angel. Or classy Spike Weaver. Or new Phyrexian Metamorph. Or Sower of Temptation. Or just any CC4 powercreep he didn't play when he had red available. There are still plenty of choices, I think you get the point.

Now, the former 4C control deck choses to drop red to keep keep black and play Esper. It will now lose Firespout. Period. Because there is no comparable substitue for it in Esper's colours that is equally strong.

I know these are just theoretical assumptions, but I think they help to make my point clear.


Last but not least, Highlander shall be understood as a competitive 1v1 singleton format. If we are banning fetchlands because they let you play 5 colour decks that are considered "too strong and too boring", this doesn't let the format look very competitive anymore.

Because inherent statements like "we are hindering the arguably best strategy (5C) by banning fetchlands because it's too strong and boring" is not competitive. If someone wants to play competitive, he or she doesn't care if he plays 8x against 4-5C Goodstuff in 8 rounds of swiss at a national championship (I'm happy that it hasn't come this far, though).

In addition, banning fetchlands is going to kill the 5C decks as we know them today. I don't care how strong a certain deck type is, making it unplayable (read: not playable in the way that it is right now) by banning certain cards can only be the ultima ratio and last resort.


tl;dr:

1. Banning fetchlands is fighting the sympton "5C insanity", but not the real cause which are the "spells on legs".

2. If you don't like that certain types of decks run almost all the same cards, banning fetchlands is NOT going to help. Instead of the 80+ same cards in each 4-5 colour Goodstuff deck, there will be the same 80+ cards in all the Bant decks after banning fetchlands.

3. Banning fetchlands will hurt the control archetype more than creature based strategies because the latter have plenty of options to replace splashed creatures because of the powercreep issue whereas control decks are missing alternatives for certain splashed control cards. So banning fetchlands will shift the momentum into playing creatures even further.

4. Banning fetchlands because 5C and its manabase are "too strong / safe" doesn't make the format look competitive.


€dit:

I still stand by that and think that trying a no-fetchland environment would be a pretty rad thing. Manabases would require more thought, if you wanted multicolour with resilience to hate you'd have to invest in green ramp or mana stones. And who knows, it might be more fun to play too. My only concern is that this might hurt Pattern-Rector, which is the only reason I still play Magic. But that deck is green and has tons of mana dorks and land fetching so it might survive, I hope...

The problem I see in this is that if you really try 5C without fetchlands that it won't be very viable in the competitive regard. "5C playing all the very fucking best" will become "3C still playing most of the best" after banning the fetchlands.

If you still stick to 5C it will force you to play manafix / stones (just like you pointed out) which is probably not worth for those few splash cards since you will die while collecting your mana. In fact, banning fetchlands might probably completely kill and erase the 5C archetype.


5. "Killing" 5C as we know it right now by banning fetchlands must be the last possible choice which it isn't IMO.

[Tiggupiru]

Regarding what Doks said about the color wheel: I am completely fine with the current wheel. Sure the abilities and strengths "bleed" to another color from time to time, but if your manabase doesn't support blue, you are stuck with Bloodbraid Elfs or black card draw if you want to gain CA. Occasional off-color thing doesn't bother me since the color is usually not able to support the lone powerful card. With current lands, that is easy as you just add a color or two.

But I do think that with the classic dual lands and all those filterlands and conditional dual lands (those that come into play tapped if you control more than 2 other lands or if you don't control a certain basic land type etc.) a 3 colour manabase then will be as stable as a 4-5C manabase with fetchlands today.

Probably and most likely. Although, stable-ish three color manabase with all duals is totally different than perfectly stable with the possibility to go full on basics given the opportunity and need. Blood Moon and Back to Basics would actually become cards that even I would consider playing, since if people just stack full duals to their manabase, wastelands and other hate cards become huge. Right now the hate is hosed by the fetchlands.

But in fact, let's have a look what happens to control oriented decks. As I pointed out earlier, they only have a limited pool of viable answers to the flood of simply super strong creatures. These control decks will get even more restricted in their choice of weapons if they can't support the mana requirements just in time which is crucial if you play the reactive part.

I have pretty good two-colored control builds that just aren't viable right now because every card Bant or Naya plays are always on time and extremely problematic. Bant's average draws will beat your average draw. Control really needs aggro or goodstuff to brick on turn or two early on and that is not happening right now. Naya can easily play Wild Nacatl, Stoneforge, Wolly Thoctar into sword and equip in the first game and then go Goblin Guide, Watchwolf, Mirran Crusader into removal on the next game. If they would have less stable lands, they would not get those murderous starts with such an ease. For example, they might need to play GW with splash for couple red spells for the lategame and neither of those curves are no longer possible, unless they get extremely lucky with lands. They would still get those one drop - two drop - three drop starts, but if one of those drops aren't one of the best possible five cards each of the colors can provide, control gets more time to play their strengths, which is using their life as a resource and draw cards and take control of the game couple turns later. If the ban would happen, I would probably take out couple of my early black spells out of my UB and the mana base is straight up stable after that. Ponders and Preordains will take care of the rest.

There would still be good dual lands still left in the format, but while Copperline Gorge, Rootbound Crag and Karplusan Forst are good cards, they each have their drawbacks. Revised duals don't and we would have just banned ten of those from every deck.

As an example, let's say the former 4C Goodstuff deck cuts red (and now is Bant) because there are no fetchlands anymore. Now it will simply replace Bloodbraid Elf with good old Loxodon Hierarch. Or New Dungeon Geists. Or New Restoration Angel. Or classy Spike Weaver. Or new Phyrexian Metamorph. Or Sower of Temptation. Or just any CC4 powercreep he didn't play when he had red available. There are still plenty of choices, I think you get the point.

This is actually my point. If instead of playing Bloodbraid against my UB control my opponent goes Loxodon Hierarch, I couldn't be happier. Bloodbraid Elfs and stupid cards like that are good against anything, but if you replace it with anything on your list for example, the card quality has dropped significantly. If they instead added Glen Elendra Archmage, I would be almost as unhappy as if they played BBE, but if they play Glen Elendra against aggro instead of Bloodbraid, well the aggro player is happy at least. This creates more choices to the deck building and playing, which would make skill matter more.

If someone wants to play competitive, he or she doesn't care if he plays 8x against 4-5C Goodstuff in 8 rounds of swiss at a national championship (I'm happy that it hasn't come this far, though).

Of course it matters. Like I said, there is no reason to play Highlander just for value. The decks are expensive, tournaments irregular, it's not officially supported format and prizes fairly low. People still play this because they find it enjoyable. If they are just pure competitive players, they much rather build standard decks or try to win a PTQ or something. Why do you think people enjoy Magic Online Cube so much? The value there is horrible as the packs they receive are never sought after, drafts are phantom and hundreds of players flood the market with their winnings giving even less value per draft. And still we have top line pros making videos about that like there is no tomorrow. Having fun is important.



Oh, and Dreamer: I think Pattern would be one of the decks that would actually benefit from this. I like Civic Wayfinder and Borderland Ranger in the deck as it is and those would become much better if this would happen. Currently, I think the deck is a poor choice for a tournament if your goal is to win.

[ChristophO]

Doks:
I do not think you have come to the right conclusions. There is only one important metric for the DCI banning policy: Tournament attendance. If attendance starts to severly drop some shit is going to get banned. While I do not agree with the assessment of the current situation regarding Highlander I strongly believe the Fetchland mana base is a big problem for highlander. Dreamer has made a pretty nice post about the basic problem here but this has to made more bluntly:

A fetchland activation will typically always have acess to ALL colors your deck is playing while at the same allowing to fetch a basic if colors can be assembled differently to shore up weakness against Blood moon/Back to basics.

This means when playing a 4 color deck that you start your mana base with 10 lands that can produce each color. If you ban those fetchlands you will not only loose IMS for your colors resulting in a less stable mana base but you will also have to enter lands with real drawbacks (e.g. coming into play tapped, costing 1 life for every use. Banning Fetchlands will invalidate 4 color tempo oriented aggroish strategies. 3 color mana bases will come at a clear cost in comparision to 2 color mana bases. With fetchlands the pattern rector mana base has acess to 20-23 initial green mana sources (lands that tap for G on turn one) while also including 15+ mana sources for B and W and also including Phyrexian Tower, Wasteland, Maze of Ith, Tectonic Edge, 2 Swamps, 1 Plains. There is no drawback to the third color at all right now with fetchlands.

Regarding your color wheel rant:
Aggro played only so few colors because the mana fixing used to be way more worse. Type two around 2001 -2002 only had painlands for example (or the invasion tap land uncommon cyle - etb tapped dual lands). Aggro needs to put up pressure, they need to hit one drop,two drop and the three drop. I believe nongreen 3 color aggro decks would not be viable without fetchlands because the mana base would be to slow. More importantly the decks would have to foucs much stronger on two colors with a clear splash color.  

Fetchlands create easy 3 and 4 color mana bases in Highlander. There is (almost) no restriction. A ban of the fetchlands would put bigger restrictions on the mana bases and diminish the presence of goodstuff decks. A perfect balance would be mana bases which work fine for two color decks and would cost 3 color decks there first turn (for examle because they would have to play a lot more etb tapped lands). This would result in many two color aggro decks (some with light splashes) and controlish decks could afford a slightly more colorful deck.

This would restrict choices and lead to different decks not the same base of 90 cards form 4 colors in all goodstuff decks with some pet choices.

Most importantly:

1. Banning fetchlands is fighting the sympton "5C insanity", but not the real cause which are the "spells on legs".

This is wrong. Spells on legs are fine. The game changes. Problem is everybody is playing the same spells on legs, because everybody can use 4 colors almost without drawback. Also there is no solutiuon to spells on legs other than taking over Magic R&D or banning all of them 

2. If you don't like that certain types of decks run almost all the same cards, banning fetchlands is NOT going to help. Instead of the 80+ same cards in each 4-5 colour Goodstuff deck, there will be the same 80+ cards in all the Bant decks after banning fetchlands.

This is wrong. Some players will play Naya or Grixis or Esper then, because Control will have a better chance against slower, less powerful aggro decks. There are 10 3 color combinations (5 shards + 5 wedges) but only 5 4 color cokmbinations. 

3. Banning fetchlands will hurt the control archetype more than creature based strategies because the latter have plenty of options to replace splashed creatures because of the powercreep issue whereas control decks are missing alternatives for certain splashed control cards. So banning fetchlands will shift the momentum into playing creatures even further.

This is wrong. First of all control strategy does not mean you do not put spells on legs to good use. Inferno Titan, Banseslyer, Consecrated Sphinx are control creatures. Aggro spells have to be on time. If they have to use less powerfull spells to make their mana work this will help control very much! Control can give up a bit tempo. Also controls mana curve is higher meaning they can afford a tap land much more easily!

4. Banning fetchlands because 5C and its manabase are "too strong / safe" doesn't make the format look competitive.

This is wrong. Fetchlands are much more powerful than other lands. They prevent tough choices for deck builders and create a uniform playing field. Also, having fun is important. 

[Doks]

@Tiggu:

Probably and most likely. Although, stable-ish three color manabase with all duals is totally different than perfectly stable with the possibility to go full on basics given the opportunity and need. Blood Moon and Back to Basics would actually become cards that even I would consider playing, since if people just stack full duals to their manabase, wastelands and other hate cards become huge. Right now the hate is hosed by the fetchlands.

You are right in that B2B and BM would become slightly stronger, I didn't think that way, my bad.

I still doubt that both cards would see so much more play since they still need to come down early enough to matter and wouldn't help much in the aggro matchup. They will be more relevant in the control and midrange / Goodstuff matchup though, but in the end it comes down if the opponent has an immidiate answer or not (just like today) and if they come down early enough (you already stated that there are not too many ways to tutor up for them to make them reliable).

I have pretty good two-colored control builds that just aren't viable right now because every card Bant or Naya plays are always on time and extremely problematic. Bant's average draws will beat your average draw. Control really needs aggro or goodstuff to brick on turn or two early on and that is not happening right now. Naya can easily play Wild Nacatl, Stoneforge, Wolly Thoctar into sword and equip in the first game and then go Goblin Guide, Watchwolf, Mirran Crusader into removal on the next game. If they would have less stable lands, they would not get those murderous starts with such an ease. For example, they might need to play GW with splash for couple red spells for the lategame and neither of those curves are no longer possible, unless they get extremely lucky with lands. They would still get those one drop - two drop - three drop starts, but if one of those drops aren't one of the best possible five cards each of the colors can provide, control gets more time to play their strengths, which is using their life as a resource and draw cards and take control of the game couple turns later. If the ban would happen, I would probably take out couple of my early black spells out of my UB and the mana base is straight up stable after that. Ponders and Preordains will take care of the rest.

Naya and RDW / Mono R will still pressure you for 7-10 points of damage at T3/4 and force you to find an answer or die. 5C Alara aggro variants will probably not (what I said: competitive 5C will probably be dead), granted, but we both just agreed that a 3 or less colour deck would be reliably playable. It's not the manabase, it's the creatures these decks can chose from that can create such ridiculous early pressure.

This is actually my point. If instead of playing Bloodbraid against my UB control my opponent goes Loxodon Hierarch, I couldn't be happier. Bloodbraid Elfs and stupid cards like that are good against anything, but if you replace it with anything on your list for example, the card quality has dropped significantly. If they instead added Glen Elendra Archmage, I would be almost as unhappy as if they played BBE, but if they play Glen Elendra against aggro instead of Bloodbraid, well the aggro player is happy at least. This creates more choices to the deck building and playing, which would make skill matter more.

But in my example the control decks lost another colour, too. Your example uses an only two coloured U/B variant (which is pretty suboptimal right now IMO because right now there is no reason to not splash at least a 3rd colour).

You can't just say Goodstuff got weaker but fade out that the control deck loses another option, too. If they have such silly starts like T1 manaelf into T2 Geist of Saint Traft into T3 Broodbraid Elf, a 4-5 color control deck can do something like T2 splashed Demonic Tutor into T3 splashed Firespout and kill just everything that BBE brought with him.

Without this colour, Goodstuff still has super strong options while control just loses its answer without a proper replacement in the remaining colours.

Conclusion:

I am pretty sure that if both archetypes have all colours available just like it is right now, control does have a better chance to beat Goodstuff compared to the scenario where only 2-3 colours variants are viable because fetchlands got banned.


What I'm trying to say is that if you ban fetchlands, you are even more "forced" to play creatures yourself making hardcore control strategies with only very few staple creatures that usually require a good amount of mana (both quantity and quality) for their bombs more or less obsolete or at least push them down into the Tier2/3 category of decks.

Of course it matters. Like I said, there is no reason to play Highlander just for value. The decks are expensive, tournaments irregular, it's not officially supported format and prizes fairly low. People still play this because they find it enjoyable. If they are just pure competitive players, they much rather build standard decks or try to win a PTQ or something. Why do you think people enjoy Magic Online Cube so much? The value there is horrible as the packs they receive are never sought after, drafts are phantom and hundreds of players flood the market with their winnings giving even less value per draft. And still we have top line pros making videos about that like there is no tomorrow. Having fun is important.

Nevermind, I mixed it up with another discussion how we could make other players see highlander more competitive.


@Chris:

This is wrong. Spells on legs are fine. The game changes. Problem is everybody is playing the same spells on legs, because everybody can use 4 colors almost without drawback. Also there is no solutiuon to spells on legs other than taking over Magic R&D or banning all of them  Grin

That makes no difference either. Then everybody will play the same spells on legs in the given colour combination. It will be another colour combination with probably less colours, but over time people will find out which cards get the work done at best and soon you will have 80-90 staples for this decktype again.

Btw: if you think the problem of powercreep is fine, I accept that. But you have to accept that some people might think otherwise and I for myself know a lot of people that think that WotC prints a lot and too many of retardedly strong creatures (just like you probably know a lot of people that are fine with these creatures).

This is wrong. Some players will play Naya or Grixis or Esper then, because Control will have a better chance against slower, less powerful aggro decks. There are 10 3 color combinations (5 shards + 5 wedges) but only 5 4 color cokmbinations.  

Same as above: people will play the same 80 cards in Grixis that are frequently played in Grixis because they have proven to be the most effective, the same 80 cards in Esper that are frequently played in Esper because they have proven to be most effective and the same 80 cards in Bant that are frequently played in Bant because they have proven to be the most effective.

I hope you didn't misunderstand and believe I was so stupid to think that people would play cards like Shriekmaw which are good in Grixis and Esper decks in a Bant deck...

This is wrong. First of all control strategy does not mean you do not put spells on legs to good use. Inferno Titan, Banseslyer, Consecrated Sphinx are control creatures. Aggro spells have to be on time. If they have to use less powerfull spells to make their mana work this will help control very much! Control can give up a bit tempo. Also controls mana curve is higher meaning they can afford a tap land much more easily!

This has nothing to do with what I wrote. I rather said that replacing a creature that requires a colour you don't run anymore because fetchlands got banned is much easier because there are so many other good creatures left in the colours that you still run whereas control decks have the problem that certain coloured spells have no equivalent counterpart in another colour which causes them to completely lose a control tool instead of replacing it with an only a little less stronger option.

This is wrong. Fetchlands are much more powerful than other lands. They prevent tough choices for deck builders and create a uniform playing field. Also, having fun is important.

As I mentioned above, I mixed it up with the discussion of how we could cause competitive players to join the Highlander format. Sorry for that.

But just for the sake of it: what is your definition of competitive? For me, a competitive format is a format I aim to win using everything that is not banned ("what's not banned is fair" motto) while not caring about fun. For example, I stopped playing Legacy because there were only 5-6 decks to beat and situations repeated far too often which is why I switched to Highlander and never regret anything while some friends stayed there trying to qualify for PTs etc. They don't have fun, they rather only want to win. That's what is competitive for me.

So what would an outside observing spiky type of player that wants to start playing Highlander think when he sees ONS / ZEN fetchlands on the ban list? At first glance he might question why people don't want the fetchland + dual land synergy.

When he gets interested, he finds this discussion and will be like "Oh well, 5C decks seem to have been a big problem at that time. People were complaining about a dominance of certain decks so they banned fetchlands to have more variety & creativity to have more 'fun'. I think I'm back to Legacy to play my RUG Delver vs the other 4 decks to beat, I play to win, not to have fun."

I am not only playing to win but I have the other mentioned reasons that want me to keep fetchlands in the format.



In general:

In the end I think that we all pretty much agree on the main points (creatures too strong, multiple colours too easily available, archetypes too standardized regarding decklists), but look at them from different perspectives.

Your main concern is that variety & creativity suffer from too easily accessible colours while I fear that certain decks, strategies and archetypes become unplayable & obsolete if you deny easy access to all 5 colours by banning fetchlands.


In the end it comes down to personal preference and it seems to be just me that thinks that the advantages of having fetchlands in the format outweigh the disadvantages. Somehow, they are still not banned yet. Lucky me.

[ChristophO]

Doks:
You severly misunderstand both Spikes and Bannings. I am a Spike type of player. I Top 32ed GP Ghent in Legacy. Legacy has 5 Tier one decks and many other decks. Highlander only has one Tier 1 archetype GWUr/b (4 color goodstuff). There are other decks that are viable of course but there is a lack of Archetypes in Tier 1 because decks blend so much because almost nobody needs to play less than 3 colors. And btw. it is fine when the archetypes are well defined by the cards played in said archetpye. But for a good metagame there need to be more Tier 1 archtypes. This problem does not show up so much in small tournaments (because there will be enough pet decks) but can easily be seen if you attend bigger Highlander Gps with more than 6 rounds of play. Starting round 4 or so the top tables have ALWAYS been filled with the 4 color goodstuff lists. This is also why we are pointing out results like the one from Dortmund just now. The finnish players seem to rather play controlish blue shells, but I am pretty sure they would have a tough time against the 4 color decks as Tiggu has described in his post pretty well. I also strongly disagree with your assessment that control decks are hurt more by fetchland ban because they need to play more spells. They do not. Controlish decks play more card advantage and a higher curve. You can have impactful creatures, too. One absolutely does not need to splash Firespout to have a viable control deck. I understand that spell driven decks are lacking but this is something that can not be fixed by people other than WotC R&D.   

[MMD]

Finally we have some content back in this forum!

Back to topic. Where can I sign the banning request? I can also sign Tiggupiru, so_not and ChristophO´s extensive explanations by nearly 100%. I have the same thoughts and expectations about this topic and nearly nothing to add here except that I can´t wait to brew new decks...

@Doks:
I disagree with most of your thoughts, especially with the Aggro/Control and diversity arguments.

Aggro/Control
A 3C Aggro deck will hardly work without loosing either speed or quality. A 3C Control deck will function without any bigger problems as you can use mana stones and CIPT lands with only a slight disadvantage as the mana curve is much higher. Even with fetchlands allowed I could post very competitive 2C control lists which I have currently splashed with a handful of cards from a 3rd colour which are not necessary but certainly an improvement. The only decks which would give me a headache at the moment would be the monocolour Aggro decks. RDW for example is already strong and would gain even more power with the ban of fetchlands.

Diversity
Certainly 80-90 cards are the same per deck type. This is very usual in all formats and also useful because these are the strongest cards in this specific deck type and the rest of the cards are either metagame dependent or pet cards. But we would gain more deck types in total because one 5C-deck splits up in many 2-3C decks.

But I am also with Doks regarding the competitve look from outside but I question how important that is and if we should give attention to that. There will be a lack of understanding and refusal from many (potential) Highlander players - I think mostly newbies and players which only seldomly play this format - about a "weird" banned list including fetchlands. Some of them will certainly abandon the format. The game itself will be more fun and perhaps even more competitive but there will be a lot of barriers to break to get acceptance from others.

I really don´t know which direction is the most desireable but I am curious how the format would develop with such a gamebreaking change. The question is what is better for the game and therefore the community (especially myself ) on the long run.

I can only let you know that I am an aged spike searching for competition which makes fun. Why should I spend time for a hobby which is not maximum fun? And how can I have fun without competion? 


Side note: At least nobody could whine about lost money as selling the Fetchies with huge profit would be no problem becasue of Legacy madness. I would have enough budget for Magic for the next couple of years, then.