Input required - Banning of the Fetchlands

[Rei]

I am a Spike type of player. I Top 32ed GP Ghent in Legacy.   

This supposed to prove a point?

Highlander only has one Tier 1 archetype GWUr/b (4 color goodstuff)

This is just so wrong. Bunching all the decks in 5 colors in one, I don't think it's that simple. Sure the 4-color "bant good stuff" might be played but c'mon. Metagaming is a thing too, it's not that hard to abuse the weaknesses this supposedly invisible deck has.

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.

What would you play if you wanted to beat a 4c in any format? 4c yourself, or something else?
And "I am pretty sure" sounds like you haven't played/tested those decks at all.
Besides, blood moon shuts down a lot of these decks with greedy mana bases, be there fetchlands or not.

Don't just throw in the towel and ban some lands cos "everyone" plays the "same deck". Once the banhammer starts swinging there's no stopping it. Next go the expensive cards etc. There's already been some stupid bans in the past (eg.hello dust bowl & buried alive)in my opinion. If you're sick of the deck, make something that beats it. Also why is it only that banning would accomplish more variety? Can also unban cards that might open some doors.

I also think it wouldn't be very attractive to possible new hl players if some random fetchlands were on the list.

[ChristophO]

Rei:
Doks claimed Legacy playing Spikes would not like Highlander if Fetchlands were to be banned. I disagree since I am am Legacy playing spike. My performance in Ghent is proof for that. I like the Pattern Rector deck against most 4c lists and I played it in 3 Big tournaments finishing 1st in the capitol cup in Berlin, 4th on the Highlanbder GP Sideevent of the DM Iserlohn and x-2 at the MKM Highlander tournament. Of course there are other viable decks. My point is that mana fixing is way too easy with both Fetchlands and Dual lands in the format. There is almost no reason to not play 4c Zoo or 4c Midrange when building a deck. People do not have to choose colors exept wether to cut red or black from their pile. I dislike this. What is your solution? Continue as is?   

[Tiggupiru]

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.

Naturally. This happens in every format. Once people start to get hang of a deck and the format, the decks they play are mostly the same until something new comes along. The key difference is that you would have to make choices. Like bant wouldn't still be able to play all of the best cards the colors have to offer, the new manabase just isn't that flexible anymore. Right now, if they need to run Thrun, Cryptic Command, Demonic Tutor and Baneslayer on the same deck to have good tools against the whole field, they can. If the fetches would get banned, they would have to makes choices. Either Thrun and Cryptic and very light splash from white, or more emphasis on the white and less triple blue spells. Overall card quality drops, we get more viable cards in the format and previously unplayable two-colored decks can actually put up a fight against them.

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.

I play to win. I brew decks to gain edge against an unprepared field, but to also have fun. I really don't care if a certain card is on the banlist if I think it's better for the format - shorter banlist doesn't itself make a better format for competitive play. Right now, my strengths as a player are hindered by the fact that people are forced to play the best cards. Reading the metagame doesn't matter at all and mirror matches (especially goodstuff mirrors) have much more luck involved than in your average game.

I am a Spike. Spikes are not playing Magic just to win tournaments. They care a *lot* about having fun, too. It's the reason they started playing (and keep playing) in the first place. If you would aim to just win as much value as you possibly can with lowest possible investment, what format would you play? Poker.

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.

Not just the variance between the same deck, but this would make two-colored decks playable again, so we would get more viable decks in total as well.

[Dreamer]

One more Spike reporting. A Spike who just likes playing good decks well, tournaments be damned. So, yeah. Funfunfunfun.
One thing that crossed my mind wrt banning the fetches is that fetches enable a couple funny tricks like grabbing a Dryad Arbor. Also, if you consider the traits of the manabases,

Basics: Durable, fast, poor multicolor support.
Taplands: Fragile, slow, excellent multicolor support.
Non-typed duals: Fragile, fast, good multicolor support.
Fetchlands + basics: Durable, fast, mediocre multicolor support.
Fetchlands + duals with basic backup: Durable, fast, insane multicolor support.

Fetches + basics vs. duals or taplands is an interesting gameplay decision. (For example fetches+basics gives reliable multicolour access, but cannot support the heavy coloured costs a base built on dual lands could. Plus there's probably some considerations for ramp decks I guess)
Banning typed duals (and probably inevitably also shocklands so fetches can only target basics and tricklands like Dryad Arbor, Mistveil Plain and the like) would wipe out two kinds of manabases off the map because shocklands and true duals would just be absorbed into the "Dual" type of manabase as one land (albeit a hideously expensive one) among others.

Just a consideration, whatever happens I don't mind either way really. As long as the sheer stupidity of fetch+dual+basic manabase and the resulting pay-to-win kind of deckbuilding is done away with.

[Tiggupiru]

Fetches vs. Shocks and Revised duals is actually an interesting debate. I didn't originally even considered this for some reason.

Fetches are better when considering cards like Dryad Arbor and stuff, they also make the optimal builds cost less. This would also keep cards like Sensei's D. Top, Crucible of Worlds and Loam from being bad.

If the duals are left in the format, shuffling times get a drastic reduction. Although, people would not play as many fetches if there were no duals, so that wouldn't even be that much of problem. Duals do allow more consistent manabases, which might be a good or a bad thing, depending how you want to look at it. Leaving shockduals with the fetches is not going to fix the problem, so this way we would need to ban 20 cards vs. the 10 fetches. I don't think that is a problem, as there would be several new cards in the banned list regardless.

I guess I'd prefer the banning of the duals over the fetches. I do also think this debate minor but also relevant.

[Doks]

[...]

Just a consideration, whatever happens I don't mind either way really. As long as the sheer stupidity of fetch+dual+basic manabase and the resulting pay-to-win kind of deckbuilding is done away with.

This sounds like a whiny rant from a frustrated magic player who doesn't have the duals / fetchies needed to run 4-5C decks reliably (I'm not saying you are one since I obviously can't know, but this is exactly what I heard several times now from players that don't have all the duals / fetchlands, I don't mean to offend you personally in any way).

2 or 3 months ago, I had a debate with two players from one of my local stores about exactly this. They really wanted to start playing Highlander but eventually did not because they thought everything but 4-5C Goodstuff sucks but at the same time they complained about how expensive the mana base alone would be (so they continued to spend hundreds of euros on the next edition's booster displays, but to each his own I say...).


I for myself was lucky enough to pick up the duals / fetchlands 7-8 years ago before revised dual scratched the three digit numbers and I can understand that one can feel limited when not having all colours available due to expensive mana base issues (I don't play Goodstuff because it's just not my type of deck, but I enjoy playing 4-5 colours, too).

But Highlander (and magic in general) was and always will be a pretty expensive hobby, so please don't let money issue's influence banning decisions.


Another problem I have with statements like this is that they leave the impression as if multicoloured Goodstuff decks were kind of an autopilot deck which they are not imo.

Granted, Goodstuff definitely is THE Tier 1 deck currently, but I don't think it's going to win an inexperienced player any tournament on its own. Your statement implies that you are automatically going to win as long as you have the money to afford the expensive manabase Goodstuff requires you to have. You are right in that the average power level of Goodstuff decks is higher than those of the tier 2 decks.

But There is a reason why you see the same people (not always playing Goodstuff themselves) popping up in different Top 8s over and over again. They know the format, the decks and are familiar with what they are playing.


Your alternative suggestion of banning duals / shock duals instead of the fetchlands sounds really interesting and should be taken into consideration when further discussing this issue.

[Dreamer]

Missed shot, sorry. I have a good assortment of fetchlands and shocks and all but one dual for the deck I play. So, no. I am just generally disgusted by the price of this game nowadays. Still remember the days when 10 euro Damnations and 20 euro Bitterblossoms were considered super hideous instead of "Eh, it's not that expensive actually." I mean, it's still some freaking cardboard, and branching onto other games like Street Fighter, SC2 and especially Yomi (another card game) just puts the madness into even clearer perspective. It's a development I don't think we need to encourage.

The money is a secondary consideration, but the main thing is that the fetch+dual+basics_for_backup manabase is not a strategic consideration - it is simply hands down the best possible manabase in every way imaginable, no contest, and happens to cost hideously much in what is supposed to be a casual format. The retardation and the format's main reason for existence are the main issues, the price just exacerbates the stupidity even further.

[Ball.Lightning]

Fetches are great, original duals are great, certailny they are best lands. But if you look at history of printing multicolor lands, you find, that there is almost one new multicolor land cycle every year. With this progres, manabases of HL decks will become nearly perfect even without fetches and duals. Look at time before Lorwyn - we had duals, shocks, pain lands, 5 fetches, taplands, karoos, mirage fetches, futuresight "duals", old filters plus city of brass and reflecting pool and that was almost all. Look what we have now and what we are getting. Everything is getting nearly perfect. Wizards obviously doesnt want players to get color screwed that often. Extreme example was 5c cruel control oce in standard that was able to cast Cruel Ultimatum, Cryptic Comand, BBE, Kitchen Finkse even Esper Charm.. Hopefully HL will never get to this point.

Building manabase is not hardest thing to do now. I dont see problem here. Netdecking has become phenomeon anyway. Second perfect manabase for goodstuff deck would be found sooner than later. Do you want people to become more honest with color requirements of their decks or just to make building manabases harder to them? I have the feeling, that most of the complains are just because of the goodstuff deck exists. What can solve this problem is more nonbasic hate (maybee wizards add some in near future) or accualy introduce combo to HL, not with banning lands. Unfocused deck cant be allstar in format, where combo is part of the metagame.

[Dreamer]

The big problem with that is that the fetches are nearly 5 colour lands that also help proof the manabase against nonbasic hate. The hate is there, but what can you do when the opponent just cracks his fetches for basics? A manabase built entirely on duals, even true duals, would be inferior to the current kind of manabase. It is simply the best of all worlds: Fast, durable and the multicolour support is nothing short of insanely good.

[Tiggupiru]

This sounds like a whiny rant from a frustrated magic player who doesn't have the duals / fetchies needed to run 4-5C decks reliably (I'm not saying you are one since I obviously can't know, but this is exactly what I heard several times now from players that don't have all the duals / fetchlands, I don't mean to offend you personally in any way).

Note that the money and time issues the fetches&duals create are not the center of the debate. Even if this ban would make our decks cost more and shuffling would increase somehow, I think this would still be very much needed to balance the format. This is just a free bonus.

Another problem I have with statements like this is that they leave the impression as if multicoloured Goodstuff decks were kind of an autopilot deck which they are not imo.

Granted, Goodstuff definitely is THE Tier 1 deck currently, but I don't think it's going to win an inexperienced player any tournament on its own. Your statement implies that you are automatically going to win as long as you have the money to afford the expensive manabase Goodstuff requires you to have. You are right in that the average power level of Goodstuff decks is higher than those of the tier 2 decks.

But There is a reason why you see the same people (not always playing Goodstuff themselves) popping up in different Top 8s over and over again. They know the format, the decks and are familiar with what they are playing.

Caw-blade mirrors were also very skill intensive and the better player usually won. Still, they banned the deck as the format was quite possibly the worst in ages. In fact, most of the best and banworthy decks are hard to pilot, but they have still been banned. Just because the top deck isn't easy to play, doesn't mean that format is fine.

Your alternative suggestion of banning duals / shock duals instead of the fetchlands sounds really interesting and should be taken into consideration when further discussing this issue.

I agree. I find it a slightly better solution, but in the end I really don't care either way.

[MMD]

Fetches vs. Shocks and Revised duals is actually an interesting debate. I didn't originally even considered this for some reason.

Agreed

Note that the money and time issues the fetches&duals create are not the center of the debate. Even if this ban would make our decks cost more and shuffling would increase somehow, I think this would still be very much needed to balance the format. This is just a free bonus.

Agreed

I guess I'd prefer the banning of the duals over the fetches. I do also think this debate minor but also relevant.

I don't agree here but I agree that either solution is better then the current state, so this is just a secondary debate. Both ways have their pros and contras but I would vote for banning the fetch lands because I would like to see cards like Blood Moon and Back to Basics be stronger than today.