HL Bannings - Community Thread

[JK]

I my opinion the spoils mulligan was an important and much needed unique feature of the format.
Additionally, it was a very clever way to circumvent or minimize uninteractive games that are caused
by screw or flood. Such games are the main weakness of MTG.

[haju]

... Additionally, it was a very clever way to circumvent or minimize uninteractive games that are caused
by screw or flood. Such games are the main weakness of MTG.

Yes and no. It also required decks to be able to play the prefect curve. So if one player cannot while the other can he would loose, even if he is able to "play" some cards. Right now I'm unsure whether it's a good idea to change the mulligan but we'll never know without lots of testing. This is the best way to test with a large number of participants.

On the one hand I think it's good when the format gets a little bit slower but on the other hand it seems that spell-based combo decks are dead and that's something I don't like as it's something the format is missing.

[Tiggupiru]

What I don't get is that people keep complaining about combo getting weaker. The biggest problem for any combo deck in this format has always been the fact that opposing decks can just present the perfect curve and kill the combo player before they can win. Without the spoils, combo gets a few turns more to set up and since those decks are composed from pretty much nothing but cantrips and tutors, they are nearly as reliable as they were a with the spoils. Having more turns is more valuable to combo decks than losing their spoils. It's way easier to combo off if you can do that after resolving a Fact or Fiction or Careful Consideration instead after casting a lowly Impulse. Tolarian Academy scared me a little bit when spoils was legal, now I think it's even better. I have no testing to back anything up, so I am not declaring anything, but I would not be too surprised if combo finds it's way back in top of the standings when the first results start to come in.

Also, what's with the "aggro is unbeatable" - nonsense? Naya and goodstuff are the decks that lose the most from this change since their manabases suddenly got much, much worse and they don't curve out all the time. WW and Burn do get better, but those decks have always been metagame decks and are fairly easily dispatched when prepared accordingly. And since they don't curve out all the time, control and combo have more turns to get their big spells online. Naya presented a problem even when decks were prepared against them, since their creatures had the most impact. When WW curves out, it's 2/2, into 2/2 into 2/2. When Naya curves out, it's 2/2, into 3/3, into 4/4 all with potentially relevant abilities. Goodstuff curving out was even more problematic for the spell based decks. Mana elf, into CA - creatures or lock pieces, into planeswalker backed with discard and/or counterspells was a nightmare to any combo player. I am not sad to see those starts become more rare at all.

Now, when is the next tournament in Finland? I have few decks that need to see the light of day.

[ChristophO]

@Tiggupiru
Agree100%

Looking forward to test High Tide and Tolarian Academy Draw7 deck.

[pyyhttu]

Now, when is the next tournament in Finland? I have few decks that need to see the light of day.

Let's contact poromagia here in south and get something worked out. They have always held tournaments when requested in enough time advance.

[big]

I my opinion the spoils mulligan was an important and much needed unique feature of the format.
Additionally, it was a very clever way to circumvent or minimize uninteractive games that are caused
by screw or flood. Such games are the main weakness of MTG.

thats just plain true. if people have so much problems with 4color goodstuff decks, why dont you just try banning the fetch lands or restrict them?

also there are tier1 control, aggro, midrange and combo decks. why all of a sudden is there a need of such a BIG change? (no pun intended)

[Peddy Frost]

Hi, I'm ne here and just registered due to a big problem, namely the new Mulligan.
First i want to excuise my bad english. I'm not used to type in this language and hope that even with much of wrong grammer the contents of my post become clear.

  I'm totally upset about the mulligan change from spoils to 1-free-to-paris. I'm feeling like the call for a slower format (thats my only explanation for the changes) is justified but the new mulligan is blindfold. Slow down the format and make decks more inconsistent and cause a slow down accidently are to different things. One thing that bannings and rulings are good for is to regulate a format in the way that good luck or bad luck is minimized. In my opinion the spoils mulligan was mandatory for consitent decks and so for a healthy format in three different ways.
  1.First it replaced the lack of a sideboard while giving the ability to keep cards that are good for a certain matchup in g2 and g3. With the new mulligan you are only able to keep kind of randomly playable hand.
  2.Second the spoils mull was important for Deckconstruction, in the way that it allowed players to build a more focused deck including cards that support the gameplan even without "Value" printed on them. With the new Mulligan its hard to support a card which reads "dead in opening hand" or "I'm part of a toolbox". I claim that a more randomized hand shortens the number of playable cards equalizing shortens the formats variance.
  3.Third is about the gameplay itself. I'm one of those who have fun playing Magic when following case happens: "Awesome! my deck does what it is suppose to do". In a 100 crad singleton format the spoils mulligan was one of the main guarantors helping to achive that case.

Next is about killing all the decks. Highlander is a casual Format and therefore I disagree with a policy of making changes to the format in a way so drastically that certain archetypes become nearly unplayable.
  Decks like for example 5-color aggro or other decks which gameplan it is to cut off the opponent from the lategame are somewhat killed.
  Elves, combo,etc. to mention a few which rely on a good start are tend to be cut off the format. 
  And even "Big Dudes" are are nearly not maindeckable since they doing what a mull to 6 does, cutting a card from your hand. (maindeckalbe? oh yeah brings me to 1. again)Poeple, including me, investet much Money in a deck, which is only for casual gameplay and dont like to come to the conclusion that i investet several hundreds of euros in it for being unplayable now. Thats some kind of a subjective reason, but i don't care cause i'm kind of pissed of .
I'm aware of the fact that banning a single card, like Oath for example would kill an entire archetype too, but i think its a whole new ball game.

To release a Tolaian Academy to a situation like this is somewhat of a dicision i'm not able to reenact. Be consequent and unban jiite too then.

Last point is the Time. Even with the format as fast as it was pre-changes 60min a round was a short amount of time, even without UX-control crawling around everywhere. my prediction: Prepare for more mulligan time, since you will often take several ones. Conceding in a boardsitutaion where you are way behind and have card disadvantage too will become more popular then killing the opponent. Draw's or even 1:0 matches will become more regular in tournaments.

I hope the "council" will reconsider their decision and maybe come to a conclusion to withdraw.
Thanks for regard.
Bye
Peddy

[ChristophO]

@peddy frost:
Your (written) english is just fine. Don't worry! Regarding your points and my opinion on them:

1)
With the new mulligan rule you are also allowed to take a "free" mulligan to avoid bad starting hands. If you want to play very narrow cards that hose certain decks you will have to think hard about wether your metagame justifies that decision. Your choice kind of shifts from the spoils decision to a deckbuilding decision.

2)
Toolbox cards will still be played (maybe one or two per deck will be cut. I do not know). I claim that people can no longer spoil away the less good cards in their opening hands so that we will see a higher number of different cards per number of games played. Games will also take longer which increases number of cards drawn wich decreases influence of bad luck (its tougher to flood or screw badly the more cards you see). Longer games will also allow you to play those dead cards in opening hand more often. It is not as easy as you make it out to be. How games will feel like exactly only testing and time will tell, but I really liked my games with the new rules so far (UW Control and Pattern rector).

3)
I am very sure you will be able to adapt your decks to the new free mulligan and still will be able to realize your decks game plan (unless your opponent plays Winter, Orb, Armageddon, Tabernacle etc. ;-)). I would like to help you (or anybody else) with deck adjusting to free mulligan rules.

[Dreamer]

I'd like to note that there's a reason the change was watchlisted. The whole point is to get people to test to see if it is actually good. In a game as varied as Magic testing by a small group of people is never enough. If it turns out that the change is really bad for the format, it can be rectified as soon as the next ban announcement. But to have anything to base that on, we need play, not theorycrafting. This game is pretty famous for theorycrafting being inaccurate.

That said, NO ban
I don't deny that even Hulk.dec fetched Primeval Titan with it a lot, about as often as Hulk itself. But in that case, wouldn't ramp, ramp, Titan be just about as nasty, especially as noted in a slower format? I feel that the decision that's being made is kind of Vengevine vs. Survival ban type - NO-Hulk is interesting (in my highly biased opinion), and ramp doesn't really care that the fatty happens to be Primeval Titan - there's tons of good fatties to play, but Hulk gets hurt unnecessarily as splash damage. Basically:

Current:
1. NO-combo
2. Ramp
3. NO-Titan <--The problem, as I understand it.

Ban P-Titan:
1. NO-combo (w/o Titan option, and thus more a tool for dedicated combo/toolbox decks)
2. Ramp

Ban NO:
1. Ramp
2.

[haju]

Doks and I were able to test some hours last weekend. We played UWr-Midrange vs. Creatureless-Esper. Both decks were adjusted to work with the new mulligan. At least we thought that we adjusted our decks

My personal conclusion after the play testing is:

• It's not enough to play more lands. Sometimes it just didn't felt right. Artifact ramp was awkward most of the time.
• Games went much longer (regarding the rounds which need to be played until one gave up or was defeated). But...
• ...games lasted as long as before the mulligan in terms of time. As the decision whether to mulligan or not is way faster than the time needed to spoil and also there were turns where nothing happened.
• One thing I really liked was that the variability of the cards was greater as one was not able to spoil useless or semi-useless cards.
• Also there were way more comebacks. As there was just one game in which one of us was able to play the perfect curve, it's easier to win a game even if the opponent has pressure early on. Thus games were not decided in early turns (which is possibly due to the matchup).
• Screw and flood. It happens and it happens more often than with the spoils mulligan. Right now I'm not sure whether it's due to a bad/imperfect adjusting (which I think and hope) or is owed to the new mulligan.
• Games felt more interactive.

I'm still not sure whether it was a good decision to change the mulligan, but unlike before I now tend more to "yes" than to "no".

[Nastaboi]

Next is about killing all the decks. Highlander is a casual Format and therefore I disagree with a policy of making changes to the format in a way so drastically that certain archetypes become nearly unplayable.
  Decks like for example 5-color aggro or other decks which gameplan it is to cut off the opponent from the lategame are somewhat killed.

Actually, it will be just the opposite: more decks will become playable. While you technically could play two or three colored decks before, there were no reason not to splash from fourth or fifth color and have a slightly better deck with no costs added. Now you have to actually make a choise between Bant/Naya/BUG/RUG/Jund/Junk (six different decks) instead of just playing 4.5C goodstuff (really just one deck).

[Peddy Frost]

@christophO

Thanks for reply. I'm glad to see that posting in this forum is not for the birds.

1) In my opinion the "free" mulligan is not a valid way to avoid bad hands. You have 7% chance of drawing a specific card in your opening hand, assumed you play exactly 100 cards. Spoiling away cards from your hand while keeping a certain number of them directly increases your chance to add a keycard to your openening hand. For example I spoil away 4 cards I now have 11% chance of hitting a needed card in my opening hand. its like increasing your chance of having a better opening hand. While shipping away the whole hand just allows you to have the exact same chance since you shuffle inbetween and draw 7 out of 100 again.
I agree with you that it is more relevant to consider specific cardchoices addicted to the metagame, and that is not a bad thing by itself. But my argument was more about cards fitting the curve while beeing not as good in a vacuum or cards beeing better in the early game while mostly being dead in the late game. With less chances of having those cards in your opening hands or beeing cut from it there are less agruments of playing them. The adjustet mulligan in g2 and g3 I mentioned last post is something that will cease to exist almost entirely.

2) About the increasing and decreasing of Luck, I agree with you that longer games reduce the impact of flood or screw. But as it not that easy it favors strategies relying on card advantage in a greater extend than tempo based strategies. when games tend to take longer having a dead card in your hand is some kind of different problem if u wanna tempo your opponent out or if u want to have card advantage. While having more chances of hitting a good opening hand/ having a more consistent opening hand, sure makes the format faster overall but supports no game strategy explicit.

3) talking about making decks nearly unplayable is not talking about a disability to adapt decks to the new mulligan. I'm sure that i am able to change my deck in a way to fit but it will be a completly different deck. Off the record-tempo becomes midrange! I was playing a 4-color tempo based deck pre-changes. Of cause I had a greedy manabase (extremly greedy with 28 lands including dryad arbor which isn't really a land) since drawing a land turn 4 and 5 was something that could lose me the game quite easly. Spoils mulligan allowed me to play like this cause I could mull specificly to find lands and in fact I only mulled to find lands. adapting the land base means go from 28 to maybe 35 even in a aggressiv deck like rdw it is hard to go under 34 with new mulligan I think. As you said time will tell, but I'm suggesting thats the case. cutting like 7 times buisness for 7 times dead cards plus the off chance of having good opening hand almost kills the deck on the spot. Sry but thats how it is. From Tier to mere!

thanks for regard
bye
peddy

[LasH]

Doks and I were able to test some hours last weekend. We played UWr-Midrange vs. Creatureless-Esper. Both decks were adjusted to work with the new mulligan. At least we thought that we adjusted our decks

My personal conclusion after the play testing is:

• One thing I really liked was that the variability of the cards was greater as one was not able to spoil useless or semi-useless cards.
• Also there were way more comebacks. As there was just one game in which one of us was able to play the perfect curve, it's easier to win a game even if the opponent has pressure early on. Thus games were not decided in early turns (which is possibly due to the matchup).
• Screw and flood. It happens and it happens more often than with the spoils mulligan. Right now I'm not sure whether it's due to a bad/imperfect adjusting (which I think and hope) or is owed to the new mulligan.
• Games felt more interactive.

I'm still not sure whether it was a good decision to change the mulligan, but unlike before I now tend more to "yes" than to "no".

If u keep adjusting your lists these points will become more viable with each game. I have as much fun with the new mulligan as i didnt have since firesgeddon left the competive area and i would never want the spoil mulligan back.

Especially your last sentence is very important because your first impression was rather bad on the new mulligan. Most ppl who are upset right now didnt even play alot or did adjust their deck wrong. No1 can exspect to build the perfect list in 4 days. A bad deckbuilder has big problems with the new mulligan esp because there are no online lists right now. But if you take your time, play - rebuild, play - rebuild you will have the best time in this format.

I also claim that the skill lvl gets much more important with this mulligan. Everybody can play the perfectly outcurved 5c Aggro but if you have to make decisions you can make faults. Longer games more decisions more fun

[MMD]

I don´t get this ongoing theoretical discussion because we already have a decision, at least for the next season. Build your best deck according to the rules and play the game. If the community finds out that the free-mull does not improve the game (or is something the community wants) we can revise the rule again.

I would love to read posts like haju´s which are really helping the community and the format. I´ll post my experiences soon.

Btw, Tolarian Academy...are you sure? I will try to break this monster for you...


P.S. For the new members here: There is already a long thread about the mulligan. Take your time to read it and you will find some food for thought.

[Vazdru]

just a few things to think about:

* the spoils mulligan was a drastic change of the Magic rulebook made by the hl council, it was justified mainly as reaction of a flaw of Magic itself, loosing a game before it actually started by mulligan it away ... the game orginally based on random hands and thereby it is and will always luck-based, leading to flooded and screwed hands as (sometimes quite unfun) part of the game
if you now want to annihilate that "flaw", you even could bring forward the argument, everyone just stack his deck before playing, screw and flood would be a thing of the past and the best deck and player would win more often, the deck would make what its made for, lucky and bad hands are minimize drastically...ok, this is a bit exaggerated, it should simply show that if you start changing rules you could even go further ...and further... - so the basic principle for the hl council should be not to change any basic rule as long this is no part of hl itself (deck creation and banned-list) and acceptable in any kind...[insertion:] i can still remember the petition "we wanna have damage-on-the-stack back again", do you? some hl council members were subscribers - what would have happened, if hl just kept origin rule by call upon using the "better" magic rules? -> my conclusio: keep the basic rules, even if you think there are better ways to play magic, btw. noone asks for damage-on-the-stack nowadays [/insertion]
so the main aim of introducing spoils was to reduce flood and screw, not to push any archetypes, enable new decks (28lands 5C aggro) or anything else - the frustration of mulligan to 6 or less cards in a decision game is cruel as anyone of us knows...theoretical free mulligan could minimize that problem almost as good as spoils
now there will be some kind of "test phase" just to varify that a change of mulligan is still justified, therefore we need your help by collecting as much data as possible ... we will decide on that basis and the experience with free mulligan in next months - that also means your theoretical analysis is appreciated but well-known (and don't make me change my mind)...the only way to change my mind is to give us any feedback to tournaments you've played in the next few month, i gonna make a poll again how and in which direction the position of the community to the question of mulligan drift after next gp and analyse metagame (based on gp / mtgpulse)    

* to spoil the right cards it is obviously a big advantage to know what your opponent is playing - if you know that your opponent is mono-colored you would never keep Back to Basics
so if player A is knowing what his opponent plays (deckspying in previous rounds etc) and his oppenent player B does not, player A receives a bigger advantage of spoils mulligan in game 1 than player B... this is at least a little downside of spoils-mulligan, isn't it?
you can say this phenomen is true with free mulligan too but you have to confess that the effect is smaller by far

anyhow ... the council has never said that free mulligan is better than spoils mulligan [nor the other way round]...but we aren't convinced spoils mulligan is needed at all costs, especially since community is split by this question
we have a good database and much experience with meta and gameplay using spoils mulligan but no fundamental data for free mulligan - so plz help us to collect those informations by posting your decklists and tournament results in the future