Ban All the Things!

Hello everyone!

I have come across something strange recently. Maybe I'm living in my own personal bubble, but for whatever reason I feel that the people I play with in my local area - competitive and casual - have a very different line of thinking from what I see on online forums and conversation threads. This is my opinion of the online community:

Everyone is constantly talking about how basically any deck that wins needs to have a card banned. This has been happening a lot with Delver in standard with people spending entire arguments on what card specifically needs to get banned. You know what I have to say? Nothing needs to get banned! I looked at the last 6 SCG Standard Open top 8s, and for each I looked at the top 8 from exactly a year ago (post NPH Caw Blade era). Here's some data:

Past 6 weeks in 2012:
Solar Flare: 3
Zombies: 3
Delver: 21
Ramp: 7
RG Aggro: 5
Architect: 1
Pod: 3
Humans: 4
Heartless: 1

Total: 48

So out of the 48 decks that have made top 8 of the past 6 weeks, 21/48 have been Delver decks (mostly UW, although there was an Esper Delver in there). That's just 43.75%. Keep in mind a couple weeks ago there was one top 8 that had 6 Delver decks and 2 Zombies decks. If we remove that top 8, then there 15/40 decks in the top 8 are delver, or 37.5%. OMFG!! A WHOLE THIRD OF THE META!!?? THIS IS SO OPPRESSIVE!! Let's compare this to Last year with Caw-Blade:

Past 6 weeks in 2011:
Caw-Blade: 21
UG Aggro: 1
RUG: 1
Red Deck: 4
Vampires: 5
Twin: 5
Darkblade: 7
Valakut: 1
Twin Blade: 1
Hawkward: 1

At first you see that Caw-Blade is just 21 decks, just like Delver now. However with Delver above all variations are compressed into just "Delver". Caw-Blade here is just the UW version. If you can recall back to last year, people were splashing different colors to gain an edge in the mirror. The most succesful of these splashes was with Black for things like Go for the Throat and (especially) Inquisition of Kozelik. The back version is listed as Darkblade. The deck listed as Twin-Blade is just the normal Caw-Blade deck but with Deceiver Exarch instead of Squardren Hawk. So If I were to compress the list down by more general archaetypes, then here is what the meta was:

CawBlade: 29
UG Aggro: 1
RUG: 1
RDW: 4
Vampires: 5
Twin: 5
Valakut: 1
Hawkward: 1

29/48 decks are Caw-Blade. That's 60.4%! Holy Cow! That's INSANE! When over 3/5s of the meta is one deck, that is when you start approaching the realm of oppressive! Even when we remove SCG Boston when there were 7 Caw-Blade decks in the top 8 (and the 8th played 4 Jace TMS) you still have 22/40 decks being Caw-Blade, or 55%!

Quick Aside
{
When I was looking up all my data I was completely shocked to discover one of the guys in my local play group won an SCG open last year with Caw-Blade. He even had to beat AJ Sacher in the mirror final!
}
End Aside

Delver is a completely beatable deck, yo just have to decide to do so. I'm playing mono-red right now just to try and turn as many cards as I can into liquid stock, but for the longest time I played Zombies, and I had an incredibly good Delver matchup! I was probably 60-40 against them! If you want to beat Delver, then I absolutely recommend zombies! During the Caw-Blade era? My best suggest was Allies, but that deck didn't do anything unless you curved out perfectly every game - not exactly consistent...

This has extended beyond standard though, and people are calling for the banning of Show + Tell in legacy. Oh noes, a powerful deck exists, so you can't run your mono-white life gain deck? Here's my mantra when it comes to legacy: do something powerful. If you're not doing something powerful, then you're bringing a super soaker to WWII - don't expect results.

How can we ever possibly beat show and tell!? Well let's take a minute and learn about the deck. What does Sneak and Show do without a Show and Tell or Sneak Attack in hand? Absolutely nothing. If you cast a turn 1 Inquisition of Kozelik and take their Show and Tell you have just put the deck incredibly far behind. Show and Tell is just another fragile combo deck. People are trying to attack Show and Tell by answering deck after they have resolved a Show and Tell. While yes, Karakas does prevent you from taking damage for the turn if the bounced creature is Griselbrand you haven't really gained much ground, and if they have a Sneak Attack then you just bought yourself a little time. If instead we duress their hand and counter a key spell all while applying pressure then we shouldn't have any problem.

You know what deck that sounds like? Team America! The deck can probably be updated with Delver of Secrets, but playing a deck with Tarmogoyf, Delver of Secrets, Dark Confidant, Duress, Hymn to Tourach, Brainstorm, Spell Pierce, and Force of Will sounds incredibly well positioned right now!

So why is everyone getting so crazy over bannings?

Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic (but mainly Jace)

Because of the banning of Jace + Stoneforge last year (which as I stated was completely legitimate) and the banning of Intangible Virtue + Lingering Souls in Innistrad Block, people have been surrounded by bannings recently. These bannings were both preambled by tons of online complaints and eventually they were appeased. Now that the precedent has been set that bannings are in fact possible in standard, people are not shy to exercise the second ammendment and fire off at any card they think is a little too good.

I will end this rant with this:
There will always be a best deck. There has always been a best deck. What makes magic awesome is that the target of "best deck" to get attacked constantly changes. If you don't like a certain best deck, fear not for every 3 months new cards are released that grant the opportunity for new decks to spring up and confront the menace. There have been very few times over the course of magic's history where a deck has actually become so oppressive that radical change had to be made. Try and go ahead and list all the decks in history that were so oppressive that no other deck was rationally considered playable, and there was no way to beat it. Things like mono-blue infect in Modern don't count since the format was brand new. Could you come up with 10 decks? Even half that? Considering magic has been around for 19 years and we have had so few brutally oppressive decks, that's awesome! Every year there has been a best deck, but just because you're the best deck doesn't mean you need to get banned.

That's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack