You CAN Play Highlander: Volume 1

[kl0wn]

Certain people have been harassing me to write a primer on the Highlander format. Well, I don't write primers. I will however answer any questions those of you might have and provide a brief briefing on the basic fundamentals.

Section One: WTF is Highlander?
Highlander is a format much like Type 1 in that is uses every tournament-legal card ever made and has a restricted list. In fact, the only difference between Type 1 and Highlander IS the restricted list. While Type 1 has a restricted list managed over there by the DCI that you have to check from time to time, Highlander's restricted list is a bit simpler: every card that is not a basic land is on the restricted list.
The same banned list is used for Highlander as Type 1.
Neither Portal nor Unglued are legal.

Section One-bee: Combo!?!?!?!
Right now you're most likely thinking that with access to only one Force of Will and one Mana Drain, combo will run rampant. You're thinking that combo decks are essentially just a pile of restricted cards anyway, and the restriction placed on counter-magic just evens the playing field. Well, let's take a look at a current combo list, shall we?

Waterbury 9-11-04
SECOND PLACE
Carl Winter
4 Death Wish
1 Burning Wish
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Windfall
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mind's Desire
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Glimmervoid
1 Underground Sea
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine

Notice any four-ofs? Tendrils (and the Storm mechanic in general) is seriously hurt by the lack of Dark Ritual. Yes, you can still run one and you can replace another with Cabal Ritual, but you still only have 2 Rituals (and one costs twice as much). Furthermore, this deck's manabase gets bitchslapped like a crackwhore trying to hold back money. What are you going to replace 3 Gemstone Mines and 3 Cities of Brass with? Yes, we have Undiscovered Paradise, but you still need to come up with 5 more lands that produce one of any color.
Even beyond that, you need disruption. 1 Duress, 1 Cabal Therapy, 1 Xantid Swarm, you say? Well...fair enough, that's not too bad a disruption base, but you also have to contend with that lack of Brainstorms and Wishes.
You can't really replace Death Wish with anything because there are only two cards that fetch sorceries from the sideboard. Essentially, the rules of Highlander took a giant, steaming crap on that strategy.
To replace Brainstorms, you COULD run the cantrip suite of Brainstorm, Opt, Sleight of Hand and Serum Visions....but they don't lend very well to a quick goldfish, despite improving the most important aspect of a winning Highlander deck, which is...

Section Two: CONSISTENCY!
Consistency kills. Consistency wins. That's what this format is all about. The more redundant your deck is, the better it will be. One of the most important things is your mana base. A lot of people build mono-blue counter decks and mono-red burn decks when first approaching Highlander. These decks are about consistency and redundancy as they contain many differently-named cards that produce nearly identical effects and their mana bases can't be screwed up, which is a sound strategy when you know absolutely nothing about the format. Fortunately for you, if you have functioning ocular orbs or an interpreter reading this for you, you know something about the format. That's not to say that "counterspells" and "burn" are bad strategies, just that I'm going to hook you chumps up with a little style.

Section Three: Strategies and Skeletons
Now we're going to take a look at some consistent and synergetic strategies and some skeletons that support these strategies.

One of my personal favorites: Reanimator

Reanimation:
Animate Dead
Necromancy
Dance of The Dead
Life/Death
Reanimate
Exhume
Diabolic Servitude
Corpse Dance
Doomed Necromancer
Coffin Queen
Living Death
Recurring Nightmare
Zombify
etc..

Search and Dump:
Buried Alive
Intuition
Careful Study
Frantic Search
Entomb
Survival of The Fittest
Thirst For Knowledge
Breakthrough
Tolarian Winds
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
etc..

This is a really good strategy when going unpowered as mana buddies such as Llawnmower, Fyndhorn, Birds of Paradise and Utopia Tree elves make for good Recurring Nightmare sacrifices as well as mana accelleration. Season to taste with stuff like incarnations or Joblin Welder and artifact men or throw a Worldgorger Dragon in for combo potential.

Of course, the Paper to Reanimator's Rock is Black/White Control as it has infinite creature removal and some sexy-as-hell graveyard cleaners:

Creature Removal:
Innocent Blood
Diabolic Edict
Chainer's Edict
Pox
Mutilate
Death Cloud
Swords To Plowshares
Exile
Chastise
Wrath of God
Vindicate
Humility
etc..

Graveyard Removal:
Coffin Purge
Cremate
Ebony Charm
Morningtide
HAUNTING ECHOES!!! (just kidding (sorta))
Withered Wretch
Carrion Beetles
etc..

Win The Game:
Sacred Mesa
Mobilization
Eternal Dragon
etc..

Graveyard abuse is a very common thing in Highlander, so if you're one of those mindless scumbags who mindlessly plays Null Rod in Type 1 and you're upset that you can't run 4 in your Highlander deck, just mindlessly hose the graveyard instead.

Finally, I give you the list that I used to win the Highlander tournament at Waterbury 04-24-04. It's the deck that took me undefeated through all 4 opponents that I faced and gave me the title of "Highlander World Champion".

Counters:
Mana Drain
Counterspell
Force of Will
Mana Leak

Draw/Search:
Ancestral Recall
Fact Or Fiction
Mystical Tutor
Brainstorm
Opt
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Merchant Scroll
Timetwister
Time Walk
Regrowth
Sylvan Library
Demonic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Tainted Pact

Removal:
Balance
The Abyss
Moat
Swords to Plowshares
Chainer's Edict
Fire/Ice
Dismantling Blow
Gorilla Shaman
Fireball
Powder Keg
Mind Twist

Bombs:
Future Sight
Yawgmoth's Will
Phyrexian Grimoire
Morphling

Manas:
Black Lotus
Lotus Petal
Sol Ring
5 Moxes
City of Brass
Undiscovered Paradise
Glimmervoid
Tolarian Academy
Island
Underground Sea
Underground River
Tropical Island
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Polluted Delta
Flooded Strand
Wooded Foothills
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Dustbowl
Mishra's Factory

Section Four: Bad Cards Can Be Good!
Not much to this section other than keep your eye out for otherwise crappy cards like Tainted Pact and Phyrexian Grimoire. They're bad in Type 1, but very good (especially Pact) in Highlander. Disrupt, anyone?

All things considered, the inherent inconsistency of the format sets the fundamental turn back to about five or so. This is what makes Highlander so fun; not only is it skill-testing and underexplored, but it's also very slow compared to what we're used to in Type 1 (unless of course you just crawled out from under a rock and haven't put a Mox on the stack since before there even was a stack) which lets you play out your game plan. Granted, Johnny Combo might go off on turn 1 once in a great while, but as long as you or your opponent aren't cheating, it will be very rare.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them and I'll answer them as soon as I can and to the best of my ability.

[Machinus]

I have played casual highlander for a while now, and I just want to say that it is definitely awesome.

[Jacob Orlove]

Just so people know, the two finalists in the highlander event sunday were both basically playing storm combo. It's absurd in a format where your opponent basically has 0 disruption.


Bryce, the public demands ALL the highlander lists. There were only 13, after all. Let's start establishing the highlander metagame.

[Pern]

I totally want to see the decklists.
This format rules.

Right now you're most likely thinking that with access to only one Force of Will and one Mana Drain, combo will run rampant.

        --- stuff removed on which the winning decks were based ---

 Essentially, the rules of Highlander took a giant, steaming crap on that strategy.

Alas.

Phil and Simon neglected to read the last sentence,
and managed turn one and two kills all day to face each other in the finals,
with the corpses of all the slower decks littering the floor around them.

Does Highlander need a banned list?

[Machinus]

It is as essential to highlander as the only-one card rule itself that nothing is banned.

[Pern]

It is as essential to highlander as the only-one card rule itself that nothing is banned.

Hmm.

Any suggestions on beating a deck that can frequently win turn one,
with only one copy of Force Of Will?

White's got some tools, what with Abeyance, Chant, Gilded Light, True Believer, and Rule Of Law,
but none of those come online before you get a turn.

[Kowal]

I'm strongly considering banning tendrils, but I think people just weren't prepared for storm combo.

[oyzar]

How about doing what we do over here? Play it with the t1.5 banned list. Anyways i need some help to get a deck. Any imput would be welcome.

[Philatio]

I dunno, the new Type 1.5 list is kinda no fun because you can't bust out your power in an uber-cool format.
     I think is right - I really snuck the tendrils thing under the radar.  I was actually expecting someone else to play it, so I had a board I cooked up for the mirror match.  I ended up not using it until the finals, and I think some of the choices were suboptimal.  There's a LOT of hate you can direct at the deck; there's the obvious chalice, trinisphere, sphere of resistance route, but those are artifacts and the deck packs maindeck and wishable bounce for artifacts.  It's the enchantments like arcane lab, rule of law, pyrostatic pillar and the like that are really irritating.  I'd actually love to play against some decks prepared for the storm combo matchup.
     Banning tendrils is, in my opinion, a good idea.  It's a lot harder to hit 17 with brain freeze, and although Simon and I had several wins a piece with tinker for colossus, other decks were running that evil combo as well (Kowal, I believe, had one equipted with cranial plating - ouchie).  I didn't win a single game with brain freeze or dryad.
     But I do think Bryce should release the decklists!

     Here's the storm combo list.

Kill (4)
Tendrils of Agony
Darksteel Colossus
Cunning Wish (or utility, really)
Quirion Dryad

Draw 7 (7)
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Time Spiral
Timetwister
Memory Jar
Tinker
Diminshing Returns

Draw more than 7 (3)
Necropotence
Bargain
Mind's Desire

Tutor(6)
Demonic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Rhystic Tutor
Tainted Pact

Acceleration (4)
Fastbond
Crop Rotation
Dark Ritual
Cabal Ritual

Cantrips (7)
Ancestral  Recall
Time Walk
Brainstorm
Impulse
Serum Visions
Chromatic  Sphere
Frantic Search

Bounce (2)
Retract
Hurkyl's Recall

The graveyard is my friend (2)
Regrowth
Yawgmoth's Will

Land (12)
Tolarian Academy
City of Brass
Glimmervoid
Gemstone Mine
Flooded Strand
Bloodstained Mire
Polluted Delta
Tundra
Underground Sea
Volcanic Island
Tropical Island
Bayou

Artifact Mana (13)
Black Lotus
Lion's Eye Diamond
5 real moxes
2 fake moxes (diamond, chrome)
Vault
Crypt
Sol Ring
Lotus Petal

Sideboard:
Berserk (for Colossus, Dryad)
Fact or Fiction
Tolarian Winds (it cantrips)
Chain of Vapor
Lim-Dul's Vault
Brain Freeze

for control matchup:
Force of Will
Duress
Xantid Swarm
City of Solitude

for the mirror:
Extract
Plagiarize
Stifle

anti-hate:
Disenchant
Naturalize