Bannings II / 2012, October 15th

[ChristophO]

@Goblinpiledrivers Post:
I strongly disagree about the Legacy comparison regarding the tutors. In Legacy you can build your deck in such a way that you will immediately win disregarding almost all board states by reaching 5 to 7 mana and Demonic tutor in Hand because of avaiable fast mana as driving power for the storm engines. This is not possible in Highlander because there is very little fast mana. This simply takes away most of Demonic Tutor's power in Highlander Games. I have written a big and long post about tutor's in general in this forum a fe weeks ago directly after the announcement (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=850.0). It merits reading because your assumption that the card disadvantage of the mirage tutors actually is relevant is faulty. The card disadvantage is only important if the tutored card does not simply win. I do not care about the lost card when i Worldy tutor for Academy Rector; i just win. If I do not win with Rector I tutor primeval titan and win with > 95%. Worldy Tutor is far stronger in Pattern than Demonic because it is only one mana and instant speed and all combo pieces are creatures anyway (and solutions, too). This is the same in HermitDruid.dec where speed and cost far outweighs Demonics lack of card disadvantage.

@Tiggupiru:
Same to you. Are you seriously proposing that demonic is stronger than Vampiric? I would even debate that imperial seal will be stronger in quite a few decks. For example oath. Only demonic does not enable T2 oath in these decks... . And the turn you resolve oath is very important to have more life and the opponent less mana to find and use a solution in one turn. Demonic is the best toolbox tutor to look for answers, but answers are always fair because they can not be more broken than the queston you are trying to answer...

@MMD:
Playing without tutors, card fixing is no option for me. It is important that decks can fallow their game plan. Finishing with pattern combo is not very exiting, but getting there is. And guess what, it is tough to get there very often. Also, Mana Drain is not game ending every time you resolve it. It is game ending if you have it and the opponent slams a big spell and you have some big spell that you can pay for. That is a lot of IFs. But of course Mana Drain is a strong and swingy card. And those cards are okay I think when they sometimes do not work well. I believe Y' Will; Drain and Oath are like this (Oath because you loose so much in all games you do not draw oath). I dislike swingy cards that are ALWAYS so broken like Stoneforge Mystic, Jitte, Natural Order.

@delta_strike:
I strongly agree

@Vazdru:
please also comment on my thread. Thx.

[Tiggupiru]

Are you seriously proposing that demonic is stronger than Vampiric? I would even debate that imperial seal will be stronger in quite a few decks. For example oath. Only demonic does not enable T2 oath in these decks... . And the turn you resolve oath is very important to have more life and the opponent less mana to find and use a solution in one turn. Demonic is the best toolbox tutor to look for answers, but answers are always fair because they can not be more broken than the queston you are trying to answer...

Yes. Demonic is better in most situations and decks. In the perfect draws it's weaker because you can ignore the card disadvantage if you literally or effectively win the game on the spot, but magical christmas land doesn't happen very often in singleton formats. Demonic is far more reliable and the second best late game top deck of any deck. And what's up with the "Demonic can only find solutions" - argument? Demonic can set up the game winning combo or Jace or whatever just as easily as Vampiric does. When the game goes long (and Highlander games do), Demonic gets better and better. It doesn't cost you a draw step, two life and the being instant doesn't matter if you are trying to combo, so you don't really react to opponent's plays as you already know what to get.

You said that there are differences between Legacy and Highlander tutors and that is exactly what this is. In Legacy where one mana and two mana are miles apart, the situation would probably be different. In 60-card formats finding your 4-of is also much more likely and the nut draws are pretty consistent and thus Vampiric gains some serious edge there. But highlander is slower format, turn three "kill you" combos are not permitted (nor they should) and massively increased randomness over the 60-card decks means that even if you pack some serious power in your individual cards, you still get longer games.

In any case, this is pretty meaningless little argument since if they both were in the format there would not be decks that would only play the other and both  cards are pretty close to one another in power level. It's not like you don't have room for two of the best cards in your deck and have to decide which one to cut.

[MMD]

@MMD:
Playing without tutors, card fixing is no option for me. It is important that decks can fallow their game plan. Finishing with pattern combo is not very exiting, but getting there is. And guess what, it is tough to get there very often. Also, Mana Drain is not game ending every time you resolve it. It is game ending if you have it and the opponent slams a big spell and you have some big spell that you can pay for. That is a lot of IFs. But of course Mana Drain is a strong and swingy card. And those cards are okay I think when they sometimes do not work well. I believe Y' Will; Drain and Oath are like this (Oath because you loose so much in all games you do not draw oath). I dislike swingy cards that are ALWAYS so broken like Stoneforge Mystic, Jitte, Natural Order.

"Fab 5" tutors: IMO many decks can follow their game plan even without these five tutors. Certainly you will have less chance to beat a certain strategy/card/game state as you have fewer solutions for it in your deck.
So yes, the game will be less predictable and a little more random and single card strategies will be more difficult to set up but it would be another solution to fight these brainless good stuff builds.

Also there are still a lot of Tier2 tutors in the format which could be used to build single card strategy decks. For example: Last tournament I played 4C Scapeshift (without white) which had about 10 Primeval Titan and/or Scapeshift tutors plus 3 Regrowth effects and a handful of library manipulation spells (like SDT) which would be reduced to "just" 8 tutors if the "Fab5" get the axe.

Mana Drain: Is at least a Counterspell so very solid and nearly never a dead card. The only IF for not being at least a very good card is UU. I cannot say this for Yawgmoth´s Will or Oath of Druids.
Stoneforge Mystic: Nearly always a threat for just 2 Mana (similar to Mana Drain),  but not capable to win you games on the spot like Mana Drain.
Jitte: Is only ALWAYS broken in "creature mirrors". If you play against Control or Combo, Jitte can be one of the weaker cards in your deck (in comparison to Stoneforge Mystic the Jitte is the  weaker card IMO).
Natural Order: I would put this into the Yawgmoth´s Will, Oath of Druids bracket. Many player think that these cards are too powerful because if the IF's come together you win/loose BIG with it which certainly fixes in your mind more than "standard" losses. But people forget that these cards are sometimes weak and at least vulnerable and need a certain setup.

[GoblinPiledriver]

The new dominating Archetype: GW+X

In earlier times we had UG+x as a solid deck, but now we have the dominating Multicolored Archetype GW+X:
In this Archetype we have cheap Manaacceleration, the best and cheapest creatures and many tutor-effects. In combination with the Zendikar-Fetchlands we have the dominating multicolored-Deck with strategy-variance from aggro till control.

Most Played Decks:
Bant: 19 GW with Blue                      40%green; 40%blue; 20% white                   (Mannheim-Style, Thomas Stier)
Naya: 14 GW with Red                       44%green; 39% white; 17% red                   (own Build)
Pattern Rector: 12 GW with Black           34%green; 34%white; 31%black                   (own Build, influenced by Tabris)
4C-Blood: 10 GW with red and black support 42%green;28%white; 16%red; 14%black            (Mannheim-Stlye, Christian Hauck)
5C-Aggro:18 GW with 3 support colors       36%green;34%white;14%red;11%black;5%blue       (Karlsruhe-Style, Jochen Korbel)
5C-Goodstuff: 19 GW with 3 support colors  29%white; 24%green; 17%blue; 17%red; 10% black (Berlin-Style, Tobias Rössler)

Total Numbers of GW+x.Decks: 92/181 =50,8%

Average->: Green:    220%/6= 36,7%
          White:    184%/6= 30,7%
          Red:       64%/6= 10,7%
          Blue:      62%/6= 10,4%
          Black:     66%/6= 11%

You want a healthy format? Stop unbanning combo cards. Stop unbanning broken cards. Not even the most broken cards in the format (oath/workshop/jar/ywill etc) can actually constantly or effective stop the creature dominance. Start BANNING, not UNBANNING.

Ban all instant tutor's (eladamri's call, worldy, enlightened)
Start banning problematic creatures (Stoneforge Mystic - 2 years to late)

+1!


Problematic Creatures:
Stoneforge Mystic         obvious reasons.
Knight of the Reliquary   no other creature gets so big for only three mana and searches all utility lands needed.
Tarmogoyf                 drasticly undercostet, no other creature is 4/5 or 5/6 for 1G

Against such creatures all other creatures look small and unworthy playing.

Problematic Tutors:
Worldly Tutor:   Simply to cheap  
Mystical Tutor:    ""
Enlighted Tutor:   ""
Eladamri's Call:   ""
Demonic Tutor:     ""

This cheap Tutors leads not to a vial variety of decks, this tutors lead to the same creatures played again and again. This contradicts the Highlander Principles. As I said before Tutoring yes but for a fair mana cost 1-2 is just too low, especially when they are instant-tutors.

[ChristophO]

In any case, this is pretty meaningless little argument since if they both were in the format there would not be decks that would only play the other and both  cards are pretty close to one another in power level. It's not like you don't have room for two of the best cards in your deck and have to decide which one to cut.

It is the singlehandedly most important argument of all. The banning list and watch list changes were made to ignite talk about tutors. Obviously some line has to be drawn somewhere regarding card power level. It is not meaningless to discuss whether Vampiric or Demonic is stronger because it will have direct impact on format credibility. The difference between one and two mana is huge in highlander, too. Every single additional mana diminishes your potential tutor targets that you can play in the same round, when you know the board state and often can bypass the opponents interaction because he just happened to tap out.

My examples are not magical christmasland. They consist of having oath in your deck, black and green mana and the tutor in your starting hand and your opponent playing with creature spells... . I would instantly trade demonic for vampiric in my UBg Oath list because it would make my deck stronger. You also completely fail to talk about instant vs. sorcery speed. That Demonic tutor is an insane late game card is true for every tutor, when mana does not matter anymore even diabolic tutor is insane. Power level shows under mana constrains. Playing a one mana tutor on t2 AND putting down a strong two drop with a mana elf is a play you can not do with demonic.

Also this is sentence is just wrong on so many levels it makes me really sad:

It doesn't cost you a draw step, two life and the being instant doesn't matter if you are trying to combo, so you don't really react to opponent's plays as you already know what to get.

1):
Instant speed is insane. Just compare Sylvan tutor and worldy tutor. One is played many many times, the is almost never played. Of course instant speed is important.
Opp. taps out? Go get awesome card with vampiric. opp. will not counter, because he had no clue what was going to happen! With vampiric/mystical you trade one hand card against the ability to force the opponent to keep up mana for an addiotional counter if he wants to stop both the counter and your following main phase.  
Opp. plays thoughtseize? Demonic gets stripped or if it was already played for a card and you had to pass because you lacked the mana it is even worse!
2):
On the other hand the two life really only matter if you are at two life (virtually) or less. Remember only the last life point is important. Life points 20 to 2 are absolutely spendable...
3):
But most importantly: You do not react to your opponents plays when playing combo? Are you kidding me? You do not care about their hand size, open mana, played cards, their clock, their deck type etc. and as a logical consequence Demonic is better because you always go for
the "combo" piece. I frequently play around aven mindcensor, instant spot removal, counterspells, etc. in all my highlander decks that use tutors. In fact, if you do not play around stuff like that you are playing much worse than you could!    

[MMD]

The new dominating Archetype: GW+X

Thanks for the compiled data but I am sorry to say that this is the "old dominating Archetype" for a long time already...but again, thanks for your statistics.

[Doks]

To all of you that want to see all the good tutors getting the axe, here comes a random question thrown in: what deck doesn't really care if all the good tutors get banned? Right, it's the Goodstuff archetype.


On the one hand, everybody is criticizing the dominance of creature based Goodstuff strategies because the average draw is so much better compared to other archetypes. People who want to see the tutors banned argue that it is boring to see the same creatures every game. They are right in that banning the tutors would decrease the chance of repeating game plays again and again. A widespread tutor effect ban would definitely weaken those decks and prevent them from having the right uber strong creature at the right time more often than not. However, do they really care? The answer is probably no.

Because on the other hand, all the other decks will be hit harder than the dominating archetype. Take away Wordly and Demonic Tutor from Goodstuff and it will still be perfectly playable. Take away Wordly and Demonic from Pattern Rector and it is significantly weaker than before.


Tutors are a nice bonus for Goodstuff decks, but that's it. For other decks however, they are essential. And this is what matters. Tutors guarantee deck diversity in the format. Can't emphasize this enough.

[LasH]

Tutors are a nice bonus for Goodstuff decks, but that's it. For other decks however, they are essential. And this is what matters. Tutors guarantee deck diversity in the format. Can't emphasize this enough.

Tutor's are the reason decks like stax can never build up a lock. Tutor's are the reason that many decks can't be as competive.
The toolbox strategy is enabled via tutor's. (Kitchen finks vs RDW, Harmonic Sliver vs any artifact based, Thrun vs counter, stoneforge - if u dont know what u play against, OOze vs Graveyard based decks or simply mana acc everything u need).

These decks just need to run silverbullets and thats because of the flexibilty based on Tutors.

Believe me, the mentioned decks WILL care about the tutor's and it will enable other archetypes to raise up again.

And the banning of Survival/birthing pod was the absolut right decision. Take the next step here and ban the rest finally.

I agree with piledriver - Tutor's yes but not at instant speed for 2 mana or less. There would still be many balanced tutor's out there (green zenith, idyllic tutor, fabricate etc, which support different game strategys BALANCED)

[Nastaboi]

To all of you that want to see all the good tutors getting the axe, here comes a random question thrown in: what deck doesn't really care if all the good tutors get banned? Right, it's the Goodstuff archetype.


On the one hand, everybody is criticizing the dominance of creature based Goodstuff strategies because the average draw is so much better compared to other archetypes. People who want to see the tutors banned argue that it is boring to see the same creatures every game. They are right in that banning the tutors would decrease the chance of repeating game plays again and again. A widespread tutor effect ban would definitely weaken those decks and prevent them from having the right uber strong creature at the right time more often than not. However, do they really care? The answer is probably no.

Because on the other hand, all the other decks will be hit harder than the dominating archetype. Take away Wordly and Demonic Tutor from Goodstuff and it will still be perfectly playable. Take away Wordly and Demonic from Pattern Rector and it is significantly weaker than before.


Tutors are a nice bonus for Goodstuff decks, but that's it. For other decks however, they are essential. And this is what matters. Tutors guarantee deck diversity in the format. Can't emphasize this enough.

Just had to quote this awesome post so that everybody reads it once again. Great job explaining the very thought I have always had about tutors and goodstuff decks.

[MMD]

To all of you that want to see all the good tutors getting the axe, here comes a random question thrown in: what deck doesn't really care if all the good tutors get banned? Right, it's the Goodstuff archetype.


On the one hand, everybody is criticizing the dominance of creature based Goodstuff strategies because the average draw is so much better compared to other archetypes. People who want to see the tutors banned argue that it is boring to see the same creatures every game. They are right in that banning the tutors would decrease the chance of repeating game plays again and again. A widespread tutor effect ban would definitely weaken those decks and prevent them from having the right uber strong creature at the right time more often than not. However, do they really care? The answer is probably no.

I strongly disagree here. A Goodstuff cannot replace Demonic Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Eladamri´s Call (and now also Enlightened Tutor) without changing their strategy. How would you replace these cards without completely giving up the silver bullet strategy (Ooze, Pridemage, Archmage...) which IS definitely the key to success of a Good stuff deck today? If you have no access to the Tier1 tutors, Goodstuff has to choose one of the known core strategies - either the control or the aggro route or loose to a certain card (combination) like Oath of Druids, Reanimator etc. way too often. Without the silver bullet strategy some old and new decks concentrating on single card strategies becoming a viable option (again).

Yes, there will be a good stuff archetype even without the Tier1 tutors – and most probably it will still be a Tier 1 deck - but it will be either Bant Aggrocontrol with a lot of counters or Naya aggro (with a lot of small creatures and burn) or any kind of similar 4-5C builds. But they all will have something in common:  They need to have a new and clear game plan without relying on their silver bullets.

Because on the other hand, all the other decks will be hit harder than the dominating archetype. Take away Wordly and Demonic Tutor from Goodstuff and it will still be perfectly playable. Take away Wordly and Demonic from Pattern Rector and it is significantly weaker than before.

I strongly disagree here as well. Take away the Tier1 tutors from a Goodstuff deck and it will loose to certain cards way more often.

SOME decks will be hit much harder (e.g. fast combo like Cephalid Breakfast) but many others not so much. All kind of "slower combo decks" like Oath, Reanimator, Scapeshift etc. will be able to use Tier 2 tutors or other library manipulation spells to pursue their strategy (see my Scapeshift example above). Certainly, setting up a combo strategy (especially creature combo) will be more difficult, but also the opponent will have less answers to the "question" of such combo deck.
Many people complain control is dead, especially without the Tier 1 tutors. My last (winning) Control builds where UWg, UB and UBg. Without the Tier1 tutors I have to remove one tutor per deck...

Tutors are a nice bonus for Goodstuff decks, but that's it. For other decks however, they are essential. And this is what matters. Tutors guarantee deck diversity in the format. Can't emphasize this enough.

Yes and no. Banning the Tier1 tutors will weaken (or even kill?) a couple of decks but will also help Tier 2-3 decks to become playable (again). I don't think that the deck diversity will change very much. But it will definitely fight the ever recurring play pattern issue and the good stuff silver bullet strategy which I don't think are good for our format.


At last I want to post a general complaint to the HL community:  There are always a lot of comments and discussions with every new banned list but nearly nobody actively cares about promoting and tournament playing the game itself. I cannot understand how people could write several comments to a single card banning/unbanning but on the other hand do not care about attending a tournament or creating other content than whining about the banned list.

[GoblinPiledriver]

Why are in the meta so less control decks? Because there are so much tutors, especially for creatures which defeat the control stratgies.
This lead to nearly omnipresent Goodstuff.creature decks, especially in the colors GW+X.

Would decks like Pattern-Rector or Cephalid-Breakfast stop existing if the amount of tutors would decrease? Probably no, but they would be played less. This would make space for other decks to be played again competitivly.



Banning Policy:
I know the highlander council doesn't want to ban creatures but it's neccesary, if they dominate the Format. Stoneforge Mystic, Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary are truly dominating the Format. This lead to that all other colored creatures are drasticly played less.
It's time to weaken the dominating Tier 1 decks, to allow the Tier 2 decks to be played again. This would truly increase the diversity of the highlander meta.


So my proposal is to ban/ or putting on the Watchlist: Stoneforge Mystic, Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary, Worldly Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Enlighted Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Eladamri's Call, Demonic Tutor and Natural order.
To finally weaken the dominating creature decks, (Green Sun's Zenith is also dominating the Format and is so part of the problem). All creatures and Tutors can be  replaced by weaker and fairer cards.

Replacement:
Stoneforge Mystic        --> Steelshaper's Gift
Tarmogoyf                --> Scavenging Ooze
Knight of the Reliquary  --> Loxodon Smitter
Worldly Tutor:           --> Sylvan Tutor
Mystical Tutor:          
Enlighted Tutor:         --> Idylic Tutor, Fabricate
Green Sun's Zenith:      --> Summoner's Pact
Eladamri's Call:         --> Altar of Bone
Demonic Tutor:           --> Tainted Pact, Diabolic Intent
Natural order            --> Chord of Calling


Mystical Teachings:

There are many extrem good Miracle Cards which would massive influence the Format(negatively). The disadvantage of being put on the top is an advantage with Miracle Cards. As Wizards printed Mystical Tutor there were only (non-Miracle)normal cards, but now Teachings and Miracle Cards couldn't be in a healthy format at the same time.

Perfect Miracle Cards:
aggro: Thunderous Wrath            This Card makes 5 damage for 1 mana.
aggro: Temporal Mastery            This Card is a Time Walk.
Midrange: Bonfire of the Damned    This Card makes a one-sided Rolling Earthquake
Control: Terminus                  This Card is a better Wrath of God for only one mana.
Control: Entreat the Angels        This Card flood the board with 4/4 Angels.

But even whitout miracle, in a normal deck there are 15-30 sorcery and instant spells. So it's like Worldly Tutor there are 20-40 creatures. Both cards holds nearly infinite possibiltys for 1 mana, which surprises the opponent instantly.

[Tiggupiru]

In any case, this is pretty meaningless little argument since if they both were in the format there would not be decks that would only play the other and both  cards are pretty close to one another in power level. It's not like you don't have room for two of the best cards in your deck and have to decide which one to cut.

It is the singlehandedly most important argument of all.

Don't really think it is. Both cards are super strong and close enough in powerlevel that I feel both should either be banned or unbanned. If you think that other one is fine, but other is clearly out of bounds, I'd love to hear your reasonings.


@Doks: Your arguments seem pretty sound. I can get behind that. Goodstuff is always the deck type with less to lose whenever cards get banned (unless you go after their lands).

There are many extrem good Miracle Cards which would massive influence the Format(negatively). The disadvantage of being put on the top is an advantage with Miracle Cards. As Wizards printed Mystical Tutor there were only (non-Miracle)normal cards, but now Teachings and Miracle Cards couldn't be in a healthy format at the same time.

Oh dear god.

aggro: Thunderous Wrath            This Card makes 5 damage for 1 mana.

With the Mystical, this is 5 damage with two cards and two mana. Gogo Sonic Burst.

aggro: Temporal Mastery            This Card is a Time Walk.

Have you tested this garbage? This was supposed to destroy Legacy with their Brainstorms, Ponders and Jaces. Didn't quite get there, actually is pretty close to unplayable right now. And if you have to use two cards to get this effect, it's just god-awful. Any number of cards you get with Mystical is going to be better than this 99% of the cases.

Midrange: Bonfire of the Damned    This Card makes a one-sided Rolling Earthquake

This card is fine, it's pretty much restricted to Midrange and is the only card that archetype wants from this list. All in all, pretty sweet combo in the mirror, but lackluster everywhere else.

Control: Terminus                  This Card is a better Wrath of God for only one mana.

This is finally a card I would actually consider running in a deck with Mystical. I admit it, it's pretty sweet, but it still costs two cards and two mana, so that's totally balanced. Nothing even remotely broken happening here.

Control: Entreat the Angels        This Card flood the board with 4/4 Angels.

Make 3 Angels makes a very good turn six play, but there are tons of other good six drops that don't need to be tutored with Mystical to work. It's a very good card and pretty sweet play, but I really don't see how would two-card finisher going to make the format unplayable. Resolving this puts opposing Midrange and Control into problems, but Control has answers in counters and sweepers. They can also just drop a huge flier and then all of them just stare at each other. To aggro this is just another board stabilizing big play.


All of these come with a pretty sever play restriction attached. Pretty big problem with the X-spells which don't get the extra mileage of playing a land before casting this. Entreat is still pretty good, but with Bonfire that can often be crucial. Simple Watchwolf needs four mana to kill (turn five) and if you are casting this combo on turn one hundred, there are plenty of other options that would have also won you the game. This also means all of them have effectively +1 mana on their miracle cost, unless you have another play.

[Dreamer]

To all of you that want to see all the good tutors getting the axe, here comes a random question thrown in: what deck doesn't really care if all the good tutors get banned? Right, it's the Goodstuff archetype.

On the one hand, everybody is criticizing the dominance of creature based Goodstuff strategies because the average draw is so much better compared to other archetypes...

I strongly disagree here. A Goodstuff cannot replace Demonic Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Eladamri´s Call (and now also Enlightened Tutor) without changing their strategy. How would you replace these cards without completely giving up the silver bullet strategy (Ooze, Pridemage, Archmage...) which IS definitely the key to success of a Good stuff deck today? If you have no access to the Tier1 tutors, Goodstuff has to choose one of the known core strategies - either the control or the aggro route or loose to a certain card (combination) like Oath of Druids, Reanimator etc. way too often. Without the silver bullet strategy some old and new decks concentrating on single card strategies becoming a viable option (again).

Yes, there will be a good stuff archetype even without the Tier1 tutors – and most probably it will still be a Tier 1 deck - but it will be either Bant Aggrocontrol with a lot of counters or Naya aggro (with a lot of small creatures and burn) or any kind of similar 4-5C builds. But they all will have something in common:  They need to have a new and clear game plan without relying on their silver bullets.

Ooze, Pridemage and Archmage are not silver bullets, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. They can serve as ones, yes, but it's far from their only purpose - this especially applies to Ooze and Pridemage, which are just good beaters anyway. Archmage isn't very good against aggro, but hey, still a good all around card. The thing that makes goodstuff strong is not the tutors - nearly any deck has access to a good amount of tutors, card selection and/or redundancy. What makes goodstuff decks strong is that they just play the best cards, whether in an aggro or midrange orientation. The average strength of their plays and the smoothness of the mana and the resultant power of the curve-out is what is crushing. Being able to play about three tutors and a semi-risky I Win button on top of that is really just that - spice. It helps with consistency and gives a bit of extra ability to crush some decks. But goodstuff decks don't play a silver bullet strategy, not by a long shot. Their strategy especially does not revolve around those tutors. It revolves around piles and then piles of the good stuff.

Because on the other hand, all the other decks will be hit harder than the dominating archetype. Take away Wordly and Demonic Tutor from Goodstuff and it will still be perfectly playable. Take away Wordly and Demonic from Pattern Rector and it is significantly weaker than before.

I strongly disagree here as well. Take away the Tier1 tutors from a Goodstuff deck and it will loose to certain cards way more often.

SOME decks will be hit much harder (e.g. fast combo like Cephalid Breakfast) but many others not so much. All kind of "slower combo decks" like Oath, Reanimator, Scapeshift etc. will be able to use Tier 2 tutors or other library manipulation spells to pursue their strategy (see my Scapeshift example above). Certainly, setting up a combo strategy (especially creature combo) will be more difficult, but also the opponent will have less answers to the "question" of such combo deck.
Many people complain control is dead, especially without the Tier 1 tutors. My last (winning) Control builds where UWg, UB and UBg. Without the Tier1 tutors I have to remove one tutor per deck...

Yay, the opponent is less likely to have an answer... except he has more slots to devote to answers supposedly, or just more threats. And the answers can be universal ones like O Ring, Pulse, Vindicate and the like because I won't have the pieces as fast. The end result is probably just more control decks with combo wincons, not anything that would actually play like an actual combo deck. Except Ramp of course, but goddamnit it's boring. Also, being at the mercy of your topdecks is just annoying. Its worth noting most of the best tutors in the format are not in blue. That is to say, other colours have amazing library manipulation and thus the foundational colors of the format are green and blue, not blue alone as it would be after a tutor ban.

Tutors are a nice bonus for Goodstuff decks, but that's it. For other decks however, they are essential. And this is what matters. Tutors guarantee deck diversity in the format. Can't emphasize this enough.

Yes and no. Banning the Tier1 tutors will weaken (or even kill?) a couple of decks but will also help Tier 2-3 decks to become playable (again). I don't think that the deck diversity will change very much. But it will definitely fight the ever recurring play pattern issue and the good stuff silver bullet strategy which I don't think are good for our format.

Those "couple" of decks that will be hit hard are precisely the Tier 1.5/2 archetypes we want to encourage. A tutor ban would least hurt Goodstuff decks of various persuasions and UWx control, I'd imagine. Dunno what it would do to help currently underrepped archetypes like Stax when they just die to the superpowerful curve-outs 5c aggro and Naya style decks can muster. 4-5c midrange Goodstuff probably shrugs and plays more universal removal.

[Dreamer]

Why are in the meta so less control decks? Because there are so much tutors, especially for creatures which defeat the control stratgies.
This lead to nearly omnipresent Goodstuff.creature decks, especially in the colors GW+X.

Eh, wut. Some specific kinds of control like artifact heavy prison decks or something, perhaps. Maybe. I could see that. But your every day run off the mill UW/UB-based control deck? Hardly. They're done in by the greater consistency of the opponent. Tutors help with that, sure, but their effect is minor, and they sure as hell are not the root cause. There's enough stupid creatures out there for goodstuff to shrug, play something else and resume with the winning.

Would decks like Pattern-Rector or Cephalid-Breakfast stop existing if the amount of tutors would decrease? Probably no, but they would be played less. This would make space for other decks to be played again competitivly.

Eh, yes? Pattern-Rector is literally a search engine in the form of a deck of cards. It is the Google of Magic. It's threats are not Geist or Thrun. It's threats are literally every single goddamn tutor you listed as a potential ban target. Every. Single. Freaking. One. And every alternative you listed is either already played in the deck or is just too weak to see play. So, yeah. The deck is built on search and recursion. It would just plain die in it's current combo-oriented form. You might see some durdly thing without the combo win afterwards but at that point you might as well play straight Ramp. The ludicrous fatties and Karn will just win anyway.

Banning Policy:
I know the highlander council doesn't want to ban creatures but it's neccesary, if they dominate the Format. Stoneforge Mystic, Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary are truly dominating the Format. This lead to that all other colored creatures are drasticly played less.
It's time to weaken the dominating Tier 1 decks, to allow the Tier 2 decks to be played again. This would truly increase the diversity of the highlander meta.

Let's ban Birds, Swords to Plowshares and Brainstorm while we are at it? Lightning Bolt too, I guess?
Goyf is not dominating the format. It's just one more dumb beater in aggro decks. Whoop de doo. It's strong, but that is all. Likewise, KotR is just strong, not banworthy. Stoneforge is the only critter there that you'd actually have a case for.

@ Tiggupiru, I think you're probably underestimating EoT Mystical for board wipe (Bonfire, Terminus) and perhaps Mystical for Entreat a bit. Highlander's tempo is more variable than that of normal Constructed and it's more board-based too. A wholesale board reset or sudden strong board presence are not anything to scoff at. Banworthy? I'd like to see it first. But I think concern is definitely warranted.

[Tiggupiru]

@ Tiggupiru, I think you're probably underestimating EoT Mystical for board wipe (Bonfire, Terminus) and perhaps Mystical for Entreat a bit. Highlander's tempo is more variable than that of normal Constructed and it's more board-based too. A wholesale board reset or sudden strong board presence are not anything to scoff at. Banworthy? I'd like to see it first. But I think concern is definitely warranted.

Entreat and Terminus are playable even without the Mystical and I've tested both good amount to have a grasp about what's going on there. They are good cards in a slow UW-control, which is an archetype I don't mind seeing more of at all. Control is just very weak in comparison right now and even the tuned lists tend to be pretty close to goodstuffs, so I wouldn't mind actually seeing another deck to emerge. Don't know if Mystical is enough to actually get there, but hopefully that would happen.

If any of those cards causes problems, it's going to be Entreat. Cheap sweepers are good (Bonfire is actually far from cheap), but they hardly make format unplayable. Terminus is just an answer the control decks have. It's not going to combo people out, it's just a tool for control to actually be respectable archetype. If Terminus-control is everywhere, the format will evolve into aggrodecks that have more emphasis on burn and haste creatures. It might change the meta, but it's not going to destroy it. Besides, it's two card wrath, so the tempo gain is pretty much all the control deck actually get, I imagine Terminus being 2 for 2 most of the time. Whereas Entreat is really good in the format and unlike Terminus, it's also a respectable win-con as well as a card able to stabilize any board situation. It might be the best tool for control to actually win the game, but it still is just a finisher, so I am unsure if that ever can become a huge problem.