League round 2.7 voting has ended.

Please vote now on the format for league round 2.7 which is due to begin on 10th November 2009 and run until 31 December 2009. The formats already run this year were Classic Tribal, Draft, A-Z, Classic, Standard, 100 Singleton; I don't recommend we repeat any of those, but this is a free vote. Please post below if you have a format suggestion that is not on the list and if possible I will add it.

Just in case tribal wins this vote, what do you all think are the major tribes?
I definitely call Goblins, Elves and Slivers major, and they should be excluded.
Are Faeries major? I'm not sure, so could anyone with pauper tribal experience please chip in and let us know.

slivers - well this is one of the top decks in classic, so to prevent everyone playing either slivers or a deck tuned to beat slivers, i say we ban this one for sure
100% for banning slivers

elves - i won the last league using elves. mostly because people didnt play alot of removal. better beatable than slivers, but i guess banning them makes sense, because people will be forced to run cards to deal with the exploding power of elves
90% for banning elves

goblins - well the only deck thats a topdeck is goblinstorm. goblin decks with 20+ creatures arent _that_ good afaik. still goblins are a "major" tribe i guess.
50% for banning goblins

faeries - faeries have a couple of pauper decks that did pretty good. UB elves did good n lorwyn block and std. the faerie deck with spellstutter sprite, ninja, daze, and a lot of 1/1 flyers is a pretty good classic deck. they are a major tribe for sure, but not unbeatable like the slivers.
50% for banning elves

so if we ban on strength i'd say only ban slivers or slivers and elves

if we ban flavor-wise, so just to force people to use something else than the 4 best known tribes, we could ban all four.

i'm slightly in favor of the latter, because i like to get surprised and play against original decks, not deck i already know by heart. but the first option definitely makes sense too.

Amar thinks rats ought to be on the list

OK here's my opinion on this.

As this is classic tribal, which is supposed to be more limited than plain classic, i think we should ban any tribes that see a lot of play and suceed in classic, because otherwise there would be no restriction on those tribes. I know this includes slivers for sure because they are tier 1 in classic. I'm not sure about elves, goblins or faeries though. They do see play in the casual room, but so does just about anything else, from the great to the truely crap.

Just because we ban tribes which are at the forefront does not mean that the format well be more fair, or less lopsided, with the exception of slivers. There are many good tribes which will take their place, many of which could have had good chance against elves, goblins and faeries. Illusions, spirits, rats, elementals, humans, cats, zombies... unless I'm missing the point and the idea for this league was to see tribes which you would never normally see like frogs, wierds, etc then banning a few tribes that see more play at the minute will do nothing but give us less options when it comes to deckbuilding.

In my opinion we should either ban the tribes which make up top classic decks (All i can see for this are slivers, though I havn't been playing much competitive classic lately so maybe someone could enlighten me on any new developments) or ban any tribe which has seen some kind of play in the past so that we get a truely unusual tribes league.

erm, just for the record i won't be playing either elves, goblins or faeries myself

Since this really does look as though tribal will win I need to tell you what happens next.

1) The poll will close automatically on 5th November.

2) On the same day the league spokesperson will announce the banned tribes. I'm hoping Empty_One can do this, but if not it will be me. The banned tribes will be decided by a clan council of Wildman4420, Empty_One and JMason, having read your advice here. This will give you 5 days to build and test your decks.

3) League round 2.7 will begin at 00:00 UTC on 10 November 2009 (same as 00:00 GMT) which is 7pm EST on 9 November if you're in the USA. We'll end it on 31 December at 12 midnight UTC.

Poll closed. Classic Tribal wins.

Okeydokey. I know I said that Empty_One would be making this announcement, but since he is unable to do that right away I'm sure he won't mind my stepping in. We had a difficult discussion on what to ban, and eventually decided :
No Tribes are banned.

Now I'm hoping that nobody has aproblem with this. In my opinion rats and slivers are going to limit each other, and many people will play something else on principle. If anyone really does have a problem then you now have until the 10th to say so here.

Just to explain a little further, the original suggestion to ban some tribes was not properly defined at the start, making it difficult to know where to draw a line, or know what was the objective of banning. If we do this again we would state exactly what we would ban up front, and why. I do apologise for not realising this earlier (I was surprised by the level of supoprt for tribal which we have already played this season and was not expecting it to win).

Banning a tribe which is head and shoulders above the rest can make the league more fun and varied for everyone. I feel that if slivers are allowed then the only people who stand a chance of winning are those who are playing slivers decks or decks built to beat slivers. A whole league based around one tribe could be a little boring and will not reward those building clever aggro decks with other tribes simply because they are completely outclassed by slivers.

That and the above is my opinion on it. I pretty confident that the deck I will be using has a good chance against slivers though, so for myself i don't mind what happens. I was thinking more of the people wanting to make aggro decks with other tribes who will not be able to compete with slivers. At the end of the day you may be right and they'll get hated out and we'll have lots of control matchups. But in my opinion it would be more fun to get rid a deck that will shape the format so much and make many decks unplayable.

andy

At risk of flogging a horse to death (is horse a viable tribe) but in the latest pauper player event there were 2 goblin decks top 8 and no slivers at all, so I remain confident that the current classic card pool has answers to slivers. As it happens white weenie came first, which makes me even happier

ok... unexpected...

not what i voted for, i doubt we will see any "strange" tribes this way. but we'll see.

The other main choice discussed for the round was to ban slivers, goblins, elves, rats and faeries which would have the effect of cutting off most of the successful tribes, and affecting all the colours (slivers being both white and green in the most succesful build).
Since there are still 2 days to go til the start of the round, we could still change the format before then.
If enough people post in favour of these 5 tribes here then I guess we will change it.
over to you.