Online Fantasy Rollenspiele Forum

[...]
Why It Was Banned

Let's talk about Standard first. Skullclamp was banned in Standard, frankly, because it was everywhere. Every competitive deck either had four in the main deck, had four in the sideboard, or was built to try and defend against it. And there were a lot more successful decks in the first two categories than in the third. Such representation is completely unhealthy for the format. Your deck has to either have Skullclamps, or have Skullclamp in its crosshairs—a definitive case of a card “warping the metagame.”

Look, for example, at the Top 8 decks from Ohio Valley Regionals. Or at those from the more recent German Nationals. Combined, those 16 decks contained 58 out of a possible 64 Skullclamps. Never in my memory have I ever seen a card show up in those numbers.

We did not ban Skullclamp to “hurt Affinity decks,” as some players believe. We weren't out to kill one specific deck (and if we were, we would have chosen a different card), but rather to salvage the entire format. Some decks are just naturally going to be better than others, and if Affinity is one of the better decks, we're ok with that. What we're not ok with is having one card be the focal point of every viable strategy.

The three “best decks” in Standard pre-banning—Ravager Affinity, Goblins, and Elf and Nail—can all do ridiculous things early in the game without Skullclamp. Affinity can play Disciple of the Vault, sacrifice everything to Arcbound Ravager, and Shrapnel Blast you to death by turn 4. Goblins can also kill on turn 4 easily with Goblin Piledriver, Goblin Warchief, and Siege-Gang Commander. Elf and Nail can play Tooth and Nail entwined on turn 4 with the help of Vine Trellis and Vernal Bloom. All three decks, should they survive into the newer metagame, will still be capable of such antics. Decks that can sometimes make plays like that are fun and exciting—the problem was that Skullclamp gave them all a resilience and a robustness that they had no right to have. Removal and board-sweepers should be able to dent their strategies, not just let them draw more cards! Note that the ideal Tooth and Nail plan makes no use of one-toughness creatures, yet the way to make the deck a winner was to add sixteen one-toughness creatures and four Skullclamps. We do not want that being the only viable plan for successful deck building for the next 16 months.

In block, Skullclamp had become sort of a “black hole”—invisible, yet its tug so strong as to drag everything around it into a swirling vortex, at the center of which sits Arc-Slogger. The reason why the “big red” deck was the best option pre-banning was because it beat the tar out of Ravager Affinity. It sat atop the food chain—Red beat Affinity, which beat everything else. Now, hopefully, the “everything else” can come out of hiding and give the red deck the challenge it needs, opening up this stagnant one-deck metagame.
[...]