So, this blue card just got banned. And a white one. They were pretty good. You might have heard about it. I guess there have been several billion words typed about this topic by now, but here are my thoughts anyway.
I won't lie, when i woke up and checked the Daily MTG page (after loading up the Dreamhack SC2 streams), i was pretty happy. Happier than i thought banning a piece of cardboard could ever make me. That doesn't mean i was dancing down the street and hugging strangers, but it made me smile at least.
That was my first, selfish reaction. I'm on a very constrained budget and Jace has never been an option for me, so there was at least a little schadenfreude. I once managed to borrow two of them from friends for a tournament and i once cast Volition Reigns on one, but that's it. Oh, yeah, I've lost to it numerous times as well.
But as a wannabe journalist, i have to try and be neutral and see the other side. Well, fine. I can understand that people spending £200+ on 4 Jaces get pissed-off when those cards get banned. I can understand the pros being mad because a skill-testing card has been removed from the format - the cost of cards is an irrelevance to them, so don't take their opinion on the cost of cards too seriously.
But coming at this from the perspective of someone who is involved in another niche competitive sport, the bannings are, if anything, too late. My other biggest hobby, for those who don't know, is esports (that's professional computer gaming). I'm also a big sports buff, and i know that the most important thing to the growth of any sport - any form of competition, really - is a constant influx and retention of new players. Wizards does an excellent job of making the game approachable for noobs. I'm writing this the day after the release parties of Commander - easily one of the best products they have made ever. Appropriately, it's also a week after the release of the event deck with Stoneforge Mystic in it. Both of these show how Wizards has stepped up their efforts in recruiting new players, rather than rest on the laurels of Zendkiar's massive sales and Duels of the Planeswalkers' immense popularity.
The banning of Jace and SFM is, in my opinion, Wizards' attempt to keep players around. Sure, a few whiners say they will quit because they've lost value. Maybe a few of them will follow through, but this is the internet, so i doubt Wizards is too worried. But players have already left because of Cawblade, and that hurts Wizards in the most painful place - their wallet. Hopefully these bans come quickly enough to stem the flow and keep the game healthy.
Wizards basically say they are banning the cards because they make standard stale. I don't think that anyone can honestly dispute that fact. You can say that Jace and SFM made the format more skill intensive, sure, that's a possibility - more informed voices than mine have made that claim. But the fact is that £200 (or more) is a steep barrier that a lot of players are unwilling or unable to overcome and when the cards that cost that much are a prerequisite for the best deck (you can't replace Jace, you just can't - believe me, i've tried) it basically means you have to play a tier two or worse deck.
Tier two decks can win, as recent tournaments have shown, but those decks took advantage of the fact that Cawblade decks were so prevelant. Control players were tuning with other control players in mind, leaving out the removal that would protect them from vampires and goblins. That's how good Cawblade is: it can ignore half of the format and still beat it more often than not.
Now, let's be clear: i'm not insinuating that Wizards banned the cards because they are too expensive - that is not really their concern. But the fact that Jace costs so much starts a snowball effect. People bitch and complain that cards are too expensive and that the format is dull; players stop attending tournaments; Wizards is forced to act. So indirectly, the price of Jace is the reason it got banned.
Stoneforge Mystic, on the other hand, is just too fucking good. £15 is expensive for a rare in this day and age, sure, but even i could bare to part with £60 if it meant i had the best deck in the format. The fact that it was barely played outside of Naya for the period before Cawblade arrived was simply because we had almost no good equipment. Now that we can put a pseudo-indestructable 4/4 with vigilance and lifelink into play on turn three, things are a bit different.
So why ban both? That's the other question people keep raising. Jace wasn't breaking the format before Mirrodin Besieged, right? Well, kinda. As i recall, there were basically three decks back then: UW Control, UB Control and Valakut. Two of those played Jace and could not function the same without him, the other two featured a then-£40 Primeval Titan in a similar "this deck sucks without me" fashion. Pretty annoying for us budget players, but they kept each other in check, with the main three maintaining a traditional rock-paper-scissors. Sure, there was no aggro deck, but it was better than the height of Cawblade's dominance. Is a format where two expensive mythics dominate better than a format where one expensive mythic and an expensive rare dominate? (oh, and lets not forget, you do still need to buy the equipment too). I don't know, but the point is that Jace did dominate the format back then too; you either played Jace, or you played cards to beat Jace - isn't that the definition of format-warping?
In combination with Stoneforge Mystic and a slew of ridiculsouly good equipment, Jace is THAT good. But if only Mystic was banned, UW would still be one of the top decks - you can make an argument that, with Torpor Orb tempering Valakut, UWwould still be THE deck. From here, it's all speculation. Would Valakut be good enough to keep Vengevine off the top tables? Can UB make a comeback with Tezzeret? I don't want to hazard a guess, though i'm fairly sure that monoblack probably still isn't good enough.
Ironically, one of the healthiest things to happen to magic is what highlighted the flaws. This is hardly an original thought from me, but the SCG opens have thrown standard into the spotlight like it never was before. Almost weekly scrutiny has made it blatantly obvious that Cawblade is better than Jund ever was. The numbers, which are more reliable than previous years due to the increased sample size, bare this out.
I guess there is one other argument to dispel - preordain. Apparently some people really believe this, which i found hard to, er, believe. The argument goes that one turn one you can dig for the Jace or the SFM, which helps your mulligans, i suppose. Okay, sure... but what are you digging for? It sure as hell ain't more preordains. Besides, everyone can play preordain, it's a common.
