Cross-posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HighlanderEurope
Clamp in preliminary testing has been warping decks towards smaller creatures, tutoring and anti-clamp tech. It seems to be a card that we can maybe contain with enough hate, unless something really broken comes along. After all, you typically do not have access to more than one clamp.
The question is, even if we can contain it, is it worth it? I have so many decks that I simply cannot play at the moment as they will take a hit from all the anti-clamp meta and in all honesty aren't as good as abusing clamp anyway. These decks were completely passable in the format prior, but no way I can play them in the current state of the format.
If things end up in the place I predict, we are having decks in few different categories 1) Goodstuffs with a heavy slant on dealing with artifacts and/or x/1 creatures, 2) Combo decks that try to punish people going all-in on clamp or anti-clamp and 3) Control with huge hosers to deal with everything and slamming down Night of Souls' Betrayals and Rest in Peaces to shut down entire strategies. This boils down to chaotic format where outcomes of the games are decided by the matchup and individual cards. Either, one player finds Clamp and rides it to victory as one player has no answer, or the other player plays Leovold.
These meta-game warping cards have already been unfun to play against in the past, Leovolds, Teferis, Okos and Opposition Agents are just game deciding on their own, interesting game play stops in the presence of these cards. Now, this is magnified to a whole new scale as the tutors for these cards increase. You need to find the Clamp if you are playing the Clamp deck, or you need to find a hate card for your opponent's broken plays. Tutors of all sizes will see more play and games that are solely decided by these silver bullets will increase.
I feel like the card pool of playable cards have gone down significantly in the last couple of years and now it is even more narrow. I don't think fair aggressive strategies are playable as you do not have access to tutors to do broken things or stop your opponent from doing that.
I do think part of the blame should be placed on tutors. Imperial Seal is an example of a card that either doesn't see play in the format, or sees play everywhere. I just do not think either scenario is good for the format.