It has been said by a number of high-profile players that Caw-Blade was the most dominant Standard deck in the history of Magic. Whether or not the “most” superlative is entirely accurate is up for debate (Ravager Affinity immediately comes to mind), it was certainly one of the most powerful archetypes that we’ve ever seen. As most of us know, Wizards of the Coast eventually banned Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic in Standard. The subsequent rotation heralded a new field of decks championed by Wolf Run Ramp…until U/W Delver appeared.

U/W Delver is suspiciously similar to Caw-Blade.

Now, there is speculation that the June 20th DCI Banned and Restricted Announcement will remove an additional card or two from Standard: Snapcaster Mage (and/or, others argue, Ponder).

No, this isn’t an article about how Delver of Secrets is either “unfair” or “the most fair, rewarding tight play.” Instead, we really should start to examine the Sisyphean nature of the Standard format over the past few years.

Why can’t we just get the damn rock up the hill? We should consider the following ideas.

Several of the best aggressive creatures are in a color that conceptually should not get the best aggressive creatures.

Geist of Saint Traft, at a cost of 1WU, attacks for six damage on the fourth turn and has hexproof. It easily is equipped on the fourth turn with a Runechanter’s Pike, making it difficult to block, or on the fifth turn with a Sword of Your Choice, often making it unblockable and generating either card advantage or an even larger life swing. Because it is a blue card, it easily can evade board sweepers via cards like Vapor Snag.

Now, while white often has received iconic, cheap, aggressive creatures (a storied history beginning with Savannah Lions), blue is renowned for things like “card selection.” As a result, it is “supposed” to have to win with cards like Frenetic Efreet. We might suppose that the mythic nature of the Geist provides its particularly high level of power and many other blue creatures don’t have the same impact on Constructed formats, but Constructed is a format where the best cards eventually are located and used.

Consider poor green, lost and alone.

For the same converted mana cost as the Geist, green can buy, at best, Dungrove Elder, which nearly precludes playing anything but a mono-green deck (i.e., limited card selection and quantity and no ability to fight against Primeval Titan via board clearing or countermagic). It also buys Daybreak Ranger which, while a powerful card on paper, consistently has failed to perform in higher-level tournaments (perhaps because it can’t kill Geist of Saint Traft).

True, green has access to a powerful creature in Strangleroot Geist at the two CMC slot, but that creature costs GG (again, a heavy green investment), and its competitor in blue is Snapcaster Mage. We all know who wins that one. More on Snapcaster Mage later.

Also, let’s not forget Delver of Secrets, often a 3/2 flying creature for a single blue mana. Conceptually and thematically it’s a well-designed card, but it allows blue to do something that it infrequently has been allowed to do in formats without Force of Will: attack for a lot of damage early in the game while not tapping out.

When a blue deck has to tap out on the fourth or sixth turn to play a threat, it provides a window of opportunity for other decks to deploy threats or to answer previously existing threats. The fact that Delver decks consistently win Legacy tournaments is a testament to the card’s abstract power, and the fact that Ponder allows Delver players to set up a favorable ‘flip’ exacerbates the issue in Standard.

In an era of powerful equipment, white creatures have been given the ability to Tutor.

There was a time when White Weenie had to play around Wrath of God very carefully. A player would hit Savannah Lions into Bonesplitter and another Savannah Lions and put on some serious pressure, but his control opponent had a significant out in Wrath of God or Pyroclasm. Even Kithkin, as resilient as it was with Windbrisk Heights and finishers like Cloudgoat Ranger, struggled against Hallowed Burial.

Compare the frequently winning Wizened Cenn to Stoneforge Mystic, and…well, there really is no comparison. As we all remember, Stoneforge Mystic allowed for a third turn, uncounterable 4/4 lifelink creature at instant speed via Batterskull, or, if that wasn’t appropriate, it allowed for any number of silver bullet equipment (typically Sword of Feast and Famine) to be fetched (and, again, played at instant, uncounterable speed).

Now consider this: would Stoneforge Mystic have been a problem if the best piece of equipment in the format were Bonesplitter? Probably not. It was explicitly the combination of a cheap creature tied to the ability to Tutor for some of the most powerful mythic rares in the format that helped to push Caw-Blade ahead of the rest of the pack.

Interestingly, Squadron Hawk presented the same problem in some ways. Even leaving aside the card advantage that it presented in conjunction with Jace, the Mind Sculptor, the simple fact that it Tutored for multiple copies of itself was simply too good alongside the available equipment. Every copy potentially was a 3/3 protection from green, protection from black Abyssal Specter / Early Harvest + beater.

Using Squadron Hawk in U/W Control was an innovative way to combat planeswalkers, and Caw-Go was an amazingly good deck. Caw-Go would have been the control deck to beat in a world where the Swords did not exist in Standard. Caw-Blade, though, was better. Arguably, it was too much better.

Blue’s card selection has been too redundant in recent Standard formats.

In Ravnica Block Constructed, blue mages who wanted to draw extra cards generally played Compulsive Research (sorcery, 3 CMC) and copies of Remand / Repeal. A “good play” was to Repeal one’s own Signets to cantrip.

In Mirrodin Block Constructed, blue mages used Thirst for Knowledge (instant, 3 CMC) and Serum Visions to cantrip and generate card quality.

Contrastingly, in the current Standard format blue mages have access to Thought Scour, Think Twice, Gitaxian Probe, and Ponder in addition to Snapcaster Mage to play them all again. Snapcaster Mage is card advantage/selection that can attack while equipped with a Sword of Feast and Famine.

During Caw-Blade’s heyday, there was Preordain, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Into the Roil, and, marginally, See Beyond and Jace’s Ingenuity. Squadron Hawk and Stoneforge Mystic, while not blue, effectively added to this issue.

To some extent, comparing Block Constructed formats to Standard formats isn’t ‘fair,’ but it’s worth noting that an extremely high density of ways to ensure card quality in a smaller format can be problematic. Snapcaster Mage / Gitaxian Probe / Ponder / Thought Scour has been called one of the most efficient card quality engines ever to have existed in a Standard format, and I think that’s a fair assessment. If W/G Humans empties its hand into a Slagstorm, that’s the game right there most of the time. If U/W Delver loses a Delver of Secrets and Geist of Saint Traft to a Slagstorm, it’s a Ponder / Snapcaster Mage away from being right where it was.

So what’s the problem?

It’s unclear whether something needs to be banned in current Standard at this point. However, the preponderance of U/W Delver decks in recent weeks suggests that the format is beginning to stagnate. It has been a long time since some sort of U/W Fish deck has not been at the top tables of StarCityGames.com Open Series. This ultimately suggests a design trend in recent sets.

In the original Magic: The Gathering game, Ancestral Recall, though a rare, was equated with Healing Salve. Designers quickly learned that the two cards were as far apart as night and day, and design has evolved immeasurably since then. However, it may be the case that current design philosophy underestimates the efficacy of cheap blue creatures and the power level even of the most rudimentary Ancestral castoffs (Ponder / Preordain).

It will be interesting to see what happens on June 20th. In whichever way the game evolves, however, Wizards has demonstrated that it truly has the players’ best interests in mind. Delver or no Delver, it’s an exciting time to be playing Magic.