Alright, so I was working on this thing for a while and I thought I'd post it since Brian posted his...

...I've been playing a lot of Elder Dragon Highlander in Magic lately, like a ton, and one of the best things about the format (other than 100 card decks and no repeats) is that you get to play with a bunch of awesome cards from old-school sets. Legacy isn't quite as fun as it could be since a lot of the best cards are banned, but that is to be expected. So my format is simple:

-75 card decks, on the dot, +1 for your character card.

-all Highlander, meaning no more than one copy of any card.

-All sets and promos are legal if they have been released officially.

-There is no regular card banned list! That's the biggest draw. The only cards that will be banned in this format are character cards - currently I'm thinking Cassie, Zas, and Hugo and that's about it.

That means if you want to Dark Empire, heh, go for it. There's only one of each. If you want to do stupid Double Dealing loops, knock yourself out. Same goes for Turbo or anything else, and if you want to smack people with that To The Bone, have at it. And yes, you get to use your Addes/Lolidays/Revit again - once, anyway, without recursion - or wait, you drew your one Military Rank!

What do you think? I think it's a fun and amusing format that can abuse all sorts of things but not very consistently, and still play fair as mill is much harder to pull off with 75 and if you're smart then you can easily plan for and avoid comboliciousness. And I know a few cards that get much stronger in this format (hello, Giradot's! ). I'm going to build a few decks and see how they play on Saturday...but feedback would be nice.

The only card I might consider banning normally is Military Rank, and that's because it's so abusive and easy, but I'm not totally sure whether it needs to go in a HIghlander format as there are plenty of ways to deal with it and very few ways to recur it.

VikramS said:

Unorthodox Style, Tag Along, Billards Player, etc.

Personally I'd be against it, but hey your format your rules.

i agree with hatman, their are plenty of ways to recur milatary rank.

i would love it just because i miss all the banned cards.

It's basically legacy highlander with no bans and required 76 card decks? Interesting, I'll give it that, and definitely hardcore

I think Tycho is kinda broked, his abilities + Double Dealing just seem to make him 500% more consistent than anyone else in the field. Card draw and recursion of any kind will be at a premium, and free block means the aggro decks [read: any deck sacrificing control checks for having attacks early] will be at an even bigger disadvantage.

I am really thinking of rebuilding morrigan or dan for this .

I am really thinking of rebuilding morrigan or dan for this .

Why Ban Hugo!?!?

oh wells...

it does sound fun but are you sure that 75 cards is enough. You definitely have a good chance of drawing into that DD or MRank opening Hand, and if not, Mulligan it away. Why not? You get Mystic, along with plenty of other RFG recursion right?

EDH has a 100 cards WITHOUT the mass draw that UFS has. Definitely give it some thought, it could prove to be a way to utilize those Legacy cards!

Havoc said:

Ya I would rather have 100 as well maybe I can talk vik into it next week .

Havoc said:

We played this format back in May of 07, I used Hugo. I had people screaming because they felt it was so unbalanced, I went undefeated and rolled the entire tournament. <Just saying>

I think banning Hugo for this format is healthy.

Antigoth said:

If he wasnt he would be too broken and would defeated the 1 card in deck rule .

I'd really not want to see ::Sakura:: with Replenishment, Revitalize, and Enlightenment all in the same deck, even as single copies.

Nyobari said:

Oh GOD no.

this could be fun. i think i need to build a sakura4, sagaat4, j. talbain, or promo alex deck for this format.

trane said:

I think if you want to play sagat play the ultra rare from set 1 he has awesome card draw and built in damage burn .

Yeah, Sagat4 won't work since he searches for COPIES of foundations.

Personally I'm against this format if abusable recursion or tutoring is allowed (i.e. Hugo3, Sakura4, Rank, etc.) Actions of this type (Tag Along, You Must Defeat Sheng Long... etc.) are fine though, as you'll only draw them once.

I'd just keep the regular banned list... we don't really want Enlightenment in this format, do we? Sure there are ways to commit it, BUT... try drawing in to one in a 75 one of only deck?

We have a guy here that plays this way, and he uses all three resources as much as he can. Crazy.

Vikram I must disagree with a few of your points:

From a personal stance I think the following rules should be added/ replace existing rules.

100 card deck, hence staying to the spirit of highlander.

All cards should gain the unique keyword lest copying shenanigans were to occur.

Seriously reconsider the banned list ( granted this format is still in it's experimental phases )

Add this rule: You can only recur a certain card X times per game. ( X is up to you as I can't give too much of a satisafactory guideline on that one.)

OR you cannot recur cards in your discard pile wholesale.

That's all my rattled brain can spew out currently, but hey if you'd like any help with this format i'd be glad to experiment too.

the only reason it works in MTG is the limited drawing ability of everything but Blue.

UFS you simply draw cards too fast. 8 hand size will stomp anything and everything in your format, guaranteed - they'll see the cards the fastest. honourable mention to the characters with some form of built-in recursion (sakura1 and sakura4 come to mind right away).

edit: and the cards that punish large hand sizes will be too hard to fish out... except by other large hand size characters.

edit edit: do any resources even have enough non-godawful attacks to feasibly pull off this kind of deck?

Well taking the comments into account:

The big problem I have with 100 cards is unlike magic, there are no "basic" foundations, so filling those out will be hard. But....I can see the argument for it.

So let's say:

-100 card decks

-There will be 7 cards total banned - Promo Hugo, Promo Zas, Broke Cassy, Sakura4, Tycho, Military Rank, and Enlightenment. I might add or subtract more as we test out the format.

-Promo Nakoruru, Promo Dhalsim (the first), Promo Adon, UR Dhalsim (the first), and R Hanzo will have their handsizes errated to 7 instead of 8 for balance issues.

Anyone else have suggestions or comments?

Make sure to look at **Seong-Mina** as well. She was so horrible to play against in a Highlander format. I'm not sure how she'd do against a 100 card deck, tho. Also our friend **Ken** should be put on a watch list, as he's excel tremendously in such a format. Neither may be hammer worthy, but need to be kept an eye on.