7-Point Highlander MTGO League – lessons learned for European Highlander

by Paul W. Over the last couple of weeks, I exposed myself for the first time in months to a competitive Highlander tournament-setting (or rather, as competitive as a non-sanctioned format can ever dream of being, but you get the idea…) by participating in a 200+ player 7 Point Highlander (7PH) league on MTGO, equating to 10 rounds of Swiss with a cut to Top […]

2020 – An early retrospective

by Paul W. In this rendition, I will attempt to make sense of yet another year of Highlander. Now, I won’t talk about the political developments within the format, its leadership and the manifold community initiatives that helped navigating us through Covid and kept the player-base engaged in these challenging times. Instead, I want to use the cards that entered (and left) the format in […]

Summer Musings (or: Why Mystic Sanctuary is busted)

by Paul W. From 07/30 – 08/02 we held an eight-player gathering which resulted in four glorious days of barbecue, sunbathing and – of course – exchanging ideas about and playing our beloved format highlander. As I expect my readers to bemost interested in the format-related outcomes of the bootcamp, I will skip the parts about how enjoyable and valuable of a social experience this […]

Going Undefeated at MGM15 with Mardu Superfriends

by Dominik B. My allegiance to the Mardu clan basically boils down to two factors: 1. I like it. 2. I can’t afford blue dual lands (for now). Being a deck builder at heart, I dedicated a lot of testing, brewing, theorizing, discarding lists, getting stomped at FNMs and being told that I cripple myself by excluding blue and green, to the idea that Mardu […]

Harnessing Highlander for MGM 15

by Paul W. Having followed the Highlander tournament scene mostly as a bystander for the last twelve months, I am very excited to attend the upcoming MGM. Over the course of the last year, several major releases and tournaments have happened, and in preparation for the tournament, I try to weave my observations and theories into an article for you to object, develop or simply […]

Bad Moon Rising Over Halle

By Niclas E. These days, it seems nothing much is going on on magicplayer.org. Most people seem to only view the site to get updates on the banned list, while most discussion on the format takes place elsewhere. However, if you look closely you can actually find a section with really old decklists and tournament reports there. It’s a really interesting read if you want […]

Breaking Into Highlander: 8 Aspects That May Make Highlander Your New Favorite Format

By Dominik B. I have been through many formats before I arrived in Berlin in late 2017 to adopt European Highlander as my possibly favorite way to play Magic: the Gathering today. My ‘career’ started with a simple shoebox. It was full of Magic cards, and a rather awkward bunch at that, and my brother and I did our best to remix these cards into […]

The benefits of playing a single color

By Niclas E. When thinking about mono-colored decks in Highlander, one will immediately jump to your mind as the scourge of the format: RDW. No other mono-colored archetype has had as much continuous success as this one. And the reasons for that are pretty obvious: it’s easy and cheap to build, relatively straight forward and easy to play, remarkably consistent and has the added bonus […]

How to win a MGM – Azorius Midrange Control

By Jonny A. Hey there, my name is Jonny and I just won the last MetaGameMasters tournament. While I am usually not a big fan of deck guides for well-known archetypes I thought I use this call for a community article to channel my desire to entertain the highlander community and some of you might remember my weekly highlander column several years ago which served […]