The words “Caw-Blade” may bring back some bad memories for many people. Turn two Stoneforge Mystic-fetching Batterskull-go was relegated to Legacy play on this day, five years ago. Reddit user /u/soulreaverdan posted a history of this unforgiving deck (on both sides of the table):
Banning cards from standard play is a huge deal for Wizards. It signifies that they’ve made a mistake so absolutely catastrophic, something so completely unbalanced, format warping, and degenerate, that they have to pull the plug on it through the rules, rather than printing a viable counter for the problem in time.
The story of Jace and Stoneforge was a confluence of mistakes both minor and major, as well as timing all coming together for one massive problem.
Let’s talk about Caw-Blade.
View it here.