Delver is not the new Jace/Stoneforge #2 (by: Ryan Clark)

Hey guys, It's Ryan.  I was going to wait until Sunday to post an article talking about the change of seasons (magic seasons not weather), but with all the talk on twitter and by other people I know saying Delver of Secrets should be banned, I thought I should clarify on some things.

                                                                                                        THE NUMBERS

This is where most of the controversy begins. Five of the top eight decks at last week’s GP Salt Lake City played four copies of the card. Seems high, but obviously there are other decks that made it so it’s not that bad. Plus, if you watched the coverage all weekend, you would notice that a lot of other decks were played such as BU control, humans of all colors, RG Ramp, RG agro (which most delver players would say is their worst match-up) and many other decks.  Right now, if you even wanted to play mono red, you would still have a playable deck that wouldn’t get destroyed.  However, some people have started to make the comparison to the CawBlade deck of the past year… Really guys? Do you not remember how bad CawBlade was, and how delver looks so tiny in comparison? Remember GP Dallas last year, and all 32 copies of Jace TMS in the top eight? Yeah, everyone who made top eight had four in the main deck… Or GP Singapore that had seven of the top eight decks playing Stoneforge Mystic... Doesn’t that sound fun playing against the same cards every round?

Brewing is possible

       Here’s a little story for you.  As new phyrexia came out, one card in particular caught my eye.  Phyrexian Obliterator. Sure it was BBBB for the mana cost but I felt like there were enough cards in black to almost make mono black and then splash with the dual lands for blue. However, after a few games of testing, I realized why Cawblade is so good.  Turn two, I played Stoneforge and got the sword of feast and famine (protection from my deck basically). Turn three, Hawk and go find the rest. Turn four, Jace and fait seal so I never find my obliterators or if you’re lucky you play your obliterator turn 4 after he taps out to play Jace. And then they -1 Jace to return him to your hand so they can mana leak it this time. This situation doesn’t just apply to Pyrexian Obliterator. Any bomb in standard had to meet the “Jace test”. How does it handle Jace? Would I rather play it over Jace? When the answer to the first question was “badly” and to the second one more often then not,“no”, they would go back to the tried and true method of just playing them and trying to out-play everyone else in the 30 mirror match-ups you would have against it.  In the current standard, we haven’t seen a ton of Delver until this past weekend, since Conley won GP Orlando with his GBR ramp deck. Saying one card is hurting the game after a strong performance for one week after 2 ½ months of being on the back burner is, at least, a jump to conclusions.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

       Wizards of the Coast have even come straight out and said the reason they banned Jace and Stoneforge was because people weren’t having fun, and were playing less magic as a side effect.  With each of the new sets, that doesn’t seem to be the case right now. I don’t know about you, but I’m having the most fun ever playing magic (saying most of my magic career until now was during Cawblade). There are so many angles of decks to make, and ways to draft that even the pros make dramatic changes on what they play from week to week. If you’re the kind of person who wants to make rouge decks, you’re fine, you want to play delver, you’re fine, if you want to play control, you’re fine, and even the mono red player has a spot in this meta game.  So please stop trying to get cards banned in standard as quickly as possible. The banning of Jace and Stoneforge was needed, but should not be repeated for every good card that leads the pack in standard. Until next time this is Ryan, and may you never get mana screwed.

MTGO- RedVelvet

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Twitter- @RedVelvetMTG