Thoughts about the current HL-Situation

[ChristophO]

Piling your deck does not randomize it. It mereley rearranges your cards because you can choose a pattern for your cards. I would always be very careful if your opponent arrives, does some kind of pile "shuffle" and then immediately presents his deck. If he stacked lands before hand (e.g. 2spells 1 land) and piled in a way to not break the pattern or to create the pattern from a prepared deck a simple cut from your side wont help it.

You are also obliged to always present a completely randomized deck whenever you are prompted to shuffle by the game rules. If you do not, you are cheating. Therefore I would be careful with expressions such as Spoils mulligan does not take addiotional tim because people can afford to have less random decks....

[Dreamer]

Hands with Black Vise would become less common as red player can't any more keep hands with one land, Vise and five random cards.

The point is, Vise is typically roughly a Bolt or something if the opponent has a good hand. Not exactly remarkable, easily substituted, especially in time with new printings. The other end is if the opponent has an awkward hand that could be fine barring Black Vise with chumpers to slow the opponent down and so on. With Vise such hands just turn into torturous, drawn out exercises in futility with a near certain loss because the clock from Vise is inevitable, fast and hard to stop. Deals about 10 damage easy. Because of one singleton that's generally speaking not worth mulliganing around. A bit like early Wasteland, which at least is a one-time event and the resultant death is typically quick.

That's the point. Not that the games aren't rare - they are, thank goodness. It's that the card serves no other function than occasional, random torture.

[MMD]

Want to remind: So that your second post won't get deleted, please use for discussion about mulligan the earlier opened thread: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation (or we can merge too...)

In reference to the Community Poll  in this topic: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=934.0 I want to write my feedback in more detail:

The poll develops as expected...Most of the Germans love their multicolored good stuff pets and either do not see a problem with cheating mana without drawback or do not want to see it because they don't want to let their good stuff deck become nearly unplayable like it is. Just the Finnish players and some (mostly North)German players want to punish greedy deck designs (interesting that this poll can roughly divided per community).

Perhaps Paris mulligan is not one of the best ideas WotC ever had. Perhaps Paris mulligan is not the best mulligan for Highlander...but why does the bigger part of the community not see the necessity to punish greedy deck design with a mulligan drawback? Even if the poll will show that Paris mulligan is not what the HL community wants, I cannot understand why nobody at least wants ANY disadvantage for greedy mana bases such as Commander mulligan, free mulligan, 0-1 land free mulligan, etc.

Why should I ever want to build a 1-2C mana base when I can have a 3-4C deck with superior card quality with nearly no drawbacks. Except RDW there is nearly no deck available which can punish these decks enough without losing its own power and focus. All these 2C non-basic hoser (proof) decks are simply weaker than the good stuff counterparts IF they do not draw (and resolve) the key cards which is not that easy in a 100/1 format.

Another aspect. I don´t understand descriptions like "strategic", "new level of depth", "new dimension" or "skillful" when we speak about the Spoils mulligan. IMO Spoils is very easy to accomplish. Certainly there is no 100% correct general strategy available but in most cases you just "search" for your ramp spell and 1-2 matchup relevant cards on turn 2-3 (3-4 if you play a control deck) together with the required land base. No secret behind. Certainly there are some aspects which you should take into account. If you play against RDW I would not bet that your 1st turn BoP will be alive on your next turn, which should be consided with your mulligan decision.

Another myth of the Spoils Mulligan I want to expose: Lower land count = more space for spells = more diversity. This is incorrect when everybody is playing 3-4C good stuff. There are simply too many must plays to include before you can start with your "exotic cards", also a lot of cards are overlapping deck types. But if the Mulligan rule will punish greedy mana bases there will be more 2C decks which have to include some "exotic cards" but get the advantage take less mulligans because of color screw.

As long as there is no mulligan drawback I will be "doomed" to choose one of the following 3-4C mana base strategies:

A)   3-4 colored with full CC1 mana package (Aether Vial, BoP, Hierarch, Elves etc.) + approx. 30 lands + all the 2-3 mana good stuff   - with a crucial play in turn 2-3    (most lists with 187 creature tutor package)
B)   3-4 colored with full CC2 mana package (Talisman/Signets or Sorcery ramp) + approx. 34 lands + all the 4-5 mana deluxe good stuff – with a crucial play in turn 3-4  (most lists with tutor package for Oath of Druids, silver bullet or combo part, etc.)
C)   (certainly also RDW with full non basic hate package for random wins, but this does not count for me personally)

I currently have six decks for category A (Bant, Junk, Jund, Naya, BUGw, RUG(bw) Hermit) and three decks for category B (BUGw Oath, UWbg Oath, GRbu Scapeshift) plus one RDW as benchmark. This is all I will ever play if I want to win a tournament. I just choose which one is matching my mood and the expected metagame. Thank you Spoils Mulligan for your colour and cheating CC madness.

[berlinballz]

A few thoughts regarding the constant asking for changing Highlander rules. Which I simply do not understand at all. Highlander is the best format in existence by far and the meta is in a great state.

I play Highlander in Berlin. I think it's fair to say, that our meta can be regarded as representative for the current (potential) state of the format for two reasons:

1) Our meta is very diverse. We have numerous decktypes here winning tournaments: monoblack, white weenie, aggro-control, combo, heavy control, 4-color midrange, rdw.
2) Berliners have won quite a few larger tournaments lately. With several players and different deck types making top 8 each time, so we're not just having the deck diversity, cause decks are tier 2.

The main arguments for supposedly ,,needed changes" simply do not apply in Berlin. Maybe it's time to reverse the saying ,,don't hate the player, hate the game".

Arguments that I simply think are wrong:

1) ,,The only viable strategy is aggro." – I used to play low curve aggro, but a lot of cards are now in the meta, that make early turn aggro efforts simply disappear. The growing number of cards like ,,Kitchen Finks", ,,Thragtusk", ,,Timely Reinforcements", ,,Lingering Souls", ,,Sphinx Revelation" and ,,Warleaders Helix", ,,Ajani Vengeant", combined with more and more good removal make low curve creature strategies less potent. I have recently had to raise my curve, and add more higher cost value spells for the late game. I now currently run 18 spells that cost 4 or more.
The meta is slowing down.

2) ,,3+Color decks are the only decks I see." – just not true for Berlin, get creative.

3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW? If anything it will make curves lower and strengthen white weenie and rdw, decks that have access to a lot of cards, that almost do the same thing and have low CMC.

4) ,,A simplified mulligan will make 2color-decks possible." In which format are 2-color-decks good? Because the only one I know of is limited and that is, well .... limited.


What I see is:
- a very functional Mulligan-Rule and a great format that never fails to amaze me with joy
- a lot of players who are not willing or able to learn how to spoil-mulligan right
- a lot of people who are not willing or able to think outside of the box, have metas with only 5-color-aggro and then blame the game


Come on everybody! Where is the love?  

[SirGalahad]

As a complement to MMD's post, i want to ask all the people taking part in the poll:

Have you ever played Highlander with another form of mulligan?

I played the format when it had the free 0-land mulligan, e.g. at GP 1, and i used to play a lot of Singleton on MODO and in both environments, there wasn't much more randomness caused by the mulligan rules. Especially in Singleton, there were many ambitious MODO-grinders playing the format without ever complaining about any randomness or the likes - these players would never invest in format, where you could loose to things you don't loose to in other formats, cause they earn money with playing MODO.

Of course, deckbuilding would have to change, playstyle would have to change, but it could be worth it to test the format with some other mulligan. Just try it out and tell me your results.

@MMD: Thanks for this post, you hit some crucial points.

[ChristophO]

3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW?

The strength of a MTG opening depends strongly on how well you use your mana every turn. Giving players the ability to do the spoil mulligan gives the option to fix your hand for this situation while sending away duplicates (inferior option with same cmc) in the mana curve. Say you have 3 Land, 1 drop (no mana elf), 2* 3 drop, 4 drop in a 4 color aggro shell. You will spoil the "bad" 3 drop, and maybe 4 drop and a land depending on decks curve and quality of 4 drop hoping to find a strong 2 drop or at least a removal or so. The result is that you can spend more mana in the first 4 turns than without the spoil mulligan thus speeding up the game and lowering the amount of cards being drawn during this game. This shortens the window in which the opponent can react. I strongly dislike this influence of the spoils mulligan on the games.

You should be aware that the shorter the games of magic becomes the more the result depends on the content of your hand (which is determined by luck). Long games (less powerful games/ddecks/cards) have the highest chance to go to the better player. Removing the spoils mulligan and make people play with the 7 they draw make opening less powerful. Blaming bad luck is done a lot by people who build worse decks than their opponents.  Maybe you guys in BErlin should learn how to be creative. Or are you afraid that your decks wont work even with a freebee mulligan (option B in the voting). You guys have weekly tournaments. You ought to try a couple of times with ADJUSTED decks. I am afraid people will mess up mulligan decisions etc. because the spoils mulligan tought them to build suboptimal decks for normal magic.  

Without the spoils mulligan decks would play a bit slower and people would have to put a bigger emphasis on their deck's curve while building the deck. At the moment deck construction is rather unimportant because the Spoils mulligan covers up almost all mistakes made there. The result would be less goodstuff piles and more focused decks that need to be built with a plan in mind (and this can be many things).

Meta Discussion

Of course there are different capable decks. The point I and many others (roughly half the community) is making is the following: The format would be even better without the stupid spoils mulligan which neglects proper deckbuilding. Look, achieving results is always a question of risk & reward. Playing many powerful cards (with a similiar aim) is the reward in MTG terms. Not being able to cast them ist the risk (because you play to few lands or too many colors). The spoils mulligan gets rid of many many problems on the risk side of magic shifting people even further towards the reward side to stay ahead of the competition. It does not matter if you get unlucky once in a while if you win a whole lot more games all the other times. We dislike the pull towards the very same powerful cards as MMD has described pretty nicely.    

[MMD]

Arguments that I simply think are wrong:

1) ,,The only viable strategy is aggro." – I used to play low curve aggro, but a lot of cards are now in the meta, that make early turn aggro efforts simply disappear. The growing number of cards like ,,Kitchen Finks", ,,Thragtusk", ,,Timely Reinforcements", ,,Lingering Souls", ,,Sphinx Revelation" and ,,Warleaders Helix", ,,Ajani Vengeant", combined with more and more good removal make low curve creature strategies less potent. I have recently had to raise my curve, and add more higher cost value spells for the late game. I now currently run 18 spells that cost 4 or more.
The meta is slowing down.

Agreed. But the problem of multi-color decks that cheat number of lands and casting costs to a perfect curve still stands.

2) ,,3+Color decks are the only decks I see." – just not true for Berlin, get creative.

Agreed. But when the dust settles the winning decks are mostly 3-4 C good stuff. Also in Berlin. I have no problem with 3-4 colored decks at all. But that should come with a liability. High risk, high reward.

3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW? If anything it will make curves lower and strengthen white weenie and rdw, decks that have access to a lot of cards, that almost do the same thing and have low CMC.

OK, but RDW also loses some chances of a perfect curve and/or to draw one of their silver bullets. Why not adding more anti aggro stuff to your deck? Be creative.

4) ,,A simplified mulligan will make 2color-decks possible." In which format are 2-color-decks good? Because the only one I know of is limited and that is, well .... limited.

I do not understand the statement at all. The format itself will define if a 2C deck design is a viable strategy. There were a lot of Standard seasons where 2C decks where Tier 1 and without checklands in M14 this could come back soon.

Regarding Highlander: There are a lot of very good 2C decks available in HL which will be stronger with a new mulligan rule because the multicolor variants are more likely to take a mulligan or are more vulnerable to hate.

Come on everybody! Where is the love?  

That´s why I write my opinion and arguments into this forum!  

[berlinballz]

wow. could you maybe try summarizing, as i did?
ever heard of the saying "i'm sorry i couldn't have written a shorter letter, i didn't have the time."? please take some more time

[MMD]

No problem, take your time.

Interesting to see that the finnish guys do not have a good stuff meta but nevertheless vote for a new mulligan.

[berlinballz]

Sorry MMD,
I wasn't refering to your post. After a long day of work I was not able to process Christoph's post though.
Some thoughts on that.

Current mulligan is "speeding up of the game":

I don't think games are to fast. We have tons of games go into overtime. 4 and 5 drops are playable, the late game is happening in very many games. I also like strong starts and I don't feel, like a strong start decides most games.

With current mulligan "deck construction is rather unimportant"
I agree and disagree. There is still a lot done wrong in deck-construction. It is very important and you can really tell in the decks that place well. I do agree, that it feels disturbing to see decklists with just 29 Lands. But that might be a price we have to pay.

current mulligan causes "pull towards the very same powerful cards"
this happens in every format, it's not the mulligan. I think Highlander is actually the one, where it happens the least. You see 4+CMC-drops that see no play in other formats. Again, the meta I see is very versatile.

"try the other mulligan"
honestly i don't see why, but maybe we will. I've been very annoyed by mulligans in limited and I see no difference really. Maybe the free new 7 mulligan is better and solves the limited issues.


I myself enjoy every extra card I can put in the deck. If I can have more powerful starts, long games, as many different cards as possible in my deck, run 4 and 5 drops, see a variety of different decks and rarely have to mulligan to 6, it just feels like a great format. I wouldn't change anything. Only my deck. All the time.
That's just me I guess.

[berlinballz]

regarding the "dual colored decks":
i have nothing against them, i just don't like the idea that we change rules to move towards more dual colored decks. it seems rather obvious to me, that in an eternal format like hl, with one copy of each card, which is about access to more cards, many people chose multicolored decks. as long as mono-colored and dual-colored decks can co-exist there is no problem. but naturally, they will be a minority, since this isn't standard.

[LasH]

3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW?

The format would be even better without the stupid spoils mulligan which neglects proper deckbuilding. Look, achieving results is always a question of risk & reward. Playing many powerful cards (with a similiar aim) is the reward in MTG terms. Not being able to cast them ist the risk (because you play to few lands or too many colors). The spoils mulligan gets rid of many many problems on the risk side of magic shifting people even further towards the reward side to stay ahead of the competition.

This is the main argument for me. With the spoil mulligan you maniplualte this aspect of magic to much in my opinion.

For Example: You choose to run natural order + progenitus or miracle cards (Very strong, very rewarding if you pull it off but a huge disadvantage on your starthand). The spoil mulligan even improves these cards since you denie their greatest disadvantage. Without the spoil mulligan you are FORCED to play more cards like "brainstorm, scroll rack, Lat-Nam's Legacy etc to avoid their disadvantage. Actually you only consider brainstorm and jace 2.0 because the % to draw them after you spoiled them away is extremly low. Some cards are simply not designed for a spoil mulligan. Everybody knows how annoying a miracle card on starthand would be or if it is your first draw. Thats how they got designed! Great reward, high risk. I could name a ton other cards which get even better just because of this mulligan and the mulligan denies their designed disadvantage.

I also agree that magic should not be about starting with 6 or less cards because you did not have a land. But seriously if you only run 27-29 lands thats the price to pay. If you run 35-37 lands you rarely have to mulligan to 6 because of no land. But option B) would perfect fit even this issue. For me its just about not manipulating your starthand with a mulligan by putting x away.

Another point i want to mention: I dont see how you can run "more cards" because of a lower landcount.

First of all control decks CANT abuse the low landcount:

We got PW-Control, 2x UW-Control, Captain America

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/13213#185327
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/13118#184171
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/12976#182142 (2 artifact lands->35)
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/13102#183937

So about that argumentation the greedy 3-5c aggro versions profit from the argument of playing more cards. I dont think we need a mulligan that even pushes these builds.

Lets sum it up:

1) The land count gets exploited by aggro decks to run more cards, control decks cant play more cards.
2) 3-5c decks are superior to other color combinations because they never have to fear color screw. They can run superior card quality, while the main advantage of a 2 color decks would be the constancy but the spoil mulligan makes this advantage available for 3-5 colors decks.
3) Perfect curves for aggro/aggro control each game (how many times do YOU miss a 1 drop playing these decks?)
4) Some cards lose their designed disadvantage on the starthand

[MMD]

1) The land count gets exploited by aggro decks to run more cards, control decks cant play more cards.

Also the control decks cheat mana. Try a (multicolor) control deck with 35 lands with a Paris mulligan rule... They simply need to play more lands as their average spell cost is higher. So if the Mulligan rule would have been changed, the control decks need to increase land count even further. They get rewarded later because the play more cards which can trade 2:1 or even better.

[berlinballz]

this thing is getting out of hand. now you are saying decks run "27-29 lands", like it's a regular thing? that is completely untrue.
most tier 1 decks stay pretty close to 33 lands. that's the same as running 20 in 60 and decks like that exist.

you state miracle spells as an example for skipping designed disadvantages. you do say you have a ton more examples. what you are not mentioning, is that miracle spells have quite a few more disadvantages built in. so many that miracle spells are almost fully irrelevant to competitive highlander. 

and again you make it seem like control doesn't exist anymore. if that is the case in your meta, i'm sorry. but don't blame the meta or the mulligan, because there are some very competitive control-players in berlin who make aggro cry.

[LasH]

Well there is a world outside of berlin believe it or not. And Berlin is for sure not more or less important for the meta than ANY other city.

I dont see where i wrote that decks only run 27-29 lands. Reread.

I dont see where i wrote that control doesnt exist anymore, futhermore i posted even links to the most recently played lists. Reread.

Your statement about miracle spells is ridiculous. Recheck the lists i posted, recheck rdw, play these cards again, reread my statement carefully respond here again.