Bringing Down the Hammer: When Should a Card be Banned?

Given the recent dominance of Caw-Blade decks in Standard, many people have been calling for the banning of the more powerful cards in the deck, most notably Stoneforge Mystic and Jace.  Certainly, when the top 8's of GP's contain 32 copies of a card, talking about banning that card is not unreasonable, and even though UW Caw-Blade has been the deck to beat since PT Paris people have still been struggling to find ways to beat it.



Of course, this is not the only time in recent years people have wanted cards to be banned in Standard.  Primeval Titan (or by association Valakut), Bloodbraid Elf, and Bitterblossom were all cards that were both a centerpiece of the best deck and rather un-fun to play against.  However, Wizards declined to ban any of those cards, and I don't expect anything to be banned now.

For now, though, lets take a look at what actually leads to a card being worthy of a ban.  In my mind, in order for a card to be banned it needs to be clear that the format would be better without that card than with it.  I'll admit that's not very specific, so I'll list a few ways in which this can be true.

1. The card has to be significantly un-fun to play with and/or against.
A recent example here is Sword of the Meek (+Thopter Foundry).  The Sword is pretty much useless without Thopter Foundry, so nothing cool or interesting was happening there.  Once the combo was assembled, though, all the Thopter player needed to do for the rest of the game was make as many tokens as possible, while gaining life at the same time.  There was also no reason for the Thopter player to try to end the game quickly, since the longer the game dragged on the further they would get ahead.  Games would often drag on for several turns after they were effectively over, and I'm pretty sure at that point neither play was actually having any fun.

2. The card has to be oppresively powerful to the point of making people give up on playing the format
There's nothing wrong with having a best deck, but if people are completely incapable of beating the best deck, they have only 2 options: play the best deck, or stop playing until something changes.  Still, people are always going to complain about something, which leads to the next point.

3. Removing the problem card can't lead to more problems.
Sure, sometimes there is a clear best deck that is oppressing every other strategy, but what if the 2nd best deck is just as bad after the best deck gets banned?  There have always been cards that, while certainly powerful, have kept even more problematic cards in check.  Sometimes the solution is to simply ban more cards, such as when Survival of the Fittest was banned after the loss of Mystical Tutor made it too good, but there's still no guarantee that this will improve things, and banning cards means giving people less options for what they can do.


Still, there are drawbacks to banning cards which are fairly significant.  While card prices aren't really as important for Wizards to consider bans, for people who own the card that is banned, watching it plummet in price is certainly a turn off.  Also, as stated above, giving people less options for what they can play in a format isn't really something you want to be doing.  Plus, there are probably people that actually enjoy playing with the card in question, and banning it will disappoint them.


Right now, I believe that Stoneforge Mystic fits all of the criteria for being banned.  It certainly has proven to be powerful to the point of being dominant in Standard.  Sure, there have often been times when decks have made up over 50% of the top 8 of a large event, including the 5 UB decks in the top 8 of Worlds last year, but when a deck is at least 50% of EVERY top 8, there's clearly a problem.  As for whether or not the card is actually fun, I'll admit that the real problem is Sword of Feast and Famine, but since Stoneforge fetches that sword the majority of the time (at least until New Phyrexia comes out) this results in a 2 mana, instant speed Sword that can't even be countered.  Even while playing the deck in multiple Get Your Game On events and Nats Qualifiers, almost every game where I played a turn 2 Stoneforge on the play was fairly unexciting.
The final question is whether or not the format would actually be improved if Stoneforge was removed from it. Right now, Caw-Blade is the primary force keeping Primeval Titan in check, and I would guess that Valakut would likely be the best deck if Stoneforge were banned.  Still, given enough time, I'm sure other decks would emerge to be successful, since UB control and aggresive red decks both have the tools needed to do so.

Therefore, I believe Stoneforge Mystic should indeed be banned in Standard, but as I stated already I find it unlikely that Wizards will actually elect to ban anything.  In recent years, Bloodbraid Elf is the only other card that in my mind was worthy of being banned, and no card has actually been banned in Standard since Affinity was dominating the first Mirrodin Block.

We'll see if New Phyrexia has a significant change on the format, and the upcoming Star City Open next weekend should showcase any new decks that emerge.  However, if Caw-Blade continues to take the majority of top 8 slots in every event, I wouldn't actually be surprised if something did get banned.

Come to think of it, it would be pretty funny if Magic's return to Mirrodin meant returning to a world where something needed to be banned in Standard.