[Deck] Canadian Threshold (aka RUG Delver, Tempo Thresh)

[Borealis]

I can see wanting the 3 Chain Lightnings and cutting a STifle, but I'm not sure I would condone the missing 4th Ponder or Goyf. Goyf is a fine cut, but I'd want to see another threat in that place (TNN, Clique, Sylvan, Young Pyro, something). I suppose the Bolts sort of support that plan, but they still aren't the same as an actual threat. Similarly, Ponder is too good and really helps us keep otherwise shaky opening hands. I'd cut the 3rd Gix Probe before ever cutting a Ponder/BS. Gix Probe is good, but paying 2 life is sometimes relevant, and we only need to see their hand once to really get a grip on the game. Redundant Probes are never very exciting. Redundant Ponders are generally just gas.

[Contract Killer]

So recently I did a bit of testing with some friends most of us running either stock lists or slight modified versions with Treasure Cruise lols. Anyways I played against the following Deathblade, BUG Nic Fit, American Delver, and Miracles. Needless to say it was a blast and Treasure Cruise is stupidly good This was the list I was running and I'll probably go through my notes to update this later with results from the actual games:

17 lands
7 fetches
3 trop
3 volcanic
4 wasteland

12 crits
4 delver
4 goose
4 goyf

31 instant/sorcery
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 daze
4 force of will
4 bolt
3 stilfe
4 chain lightning
2 spell pierce
2 treasure cruise

SB
2 submerge
2 pyroblast
2 flusterstorm
1 destructive revelry
1 ancient grudge
2 rough and tumble
1 vendilion clique
1 sylvan library
1 sulfur elemental
2 grafdigger's cage

Pretty much every time I played curise I was happy. Two of them definitely seem like the right number you almost never get it in your opener, and you only see it once per game or so.
The interaction with goose wasn't really a problem. The only time it caused an issue was doing it post combat against miracles and they had force + counterspell to my force. Other times when I played it post combat with goose I would get stuff like daze + wasteland + brainstorm or bolt + chain lightning + fetch etc. The point is refueling the graveyard post cruise isn't that hard when you get +3 cards and you'll probably have like 9 cards in the yard anyways. I mean you need at least 6 cards to refuel the yard and you're at +4 by the next turn so out shouldn't be too hard.

I'm not real happy with shaving the 8th fetch, but I couldn't find any other room. I really like the stock 4 ponder and 4 goyf so I'm not touching those. If I was packing 4 or even 3 probes I would feel better about shaving the 8th fetch. That aside it didn't run that bad with only 7 fetches. I'll probably jam something like this at my LGS tournament next week which I'll have a full report on.

[cheerios]

Hi Guys,

I tested a new list with 3x dig thru time vs uwr miracles and uwr delver. The card is nuts pre board. However, I might cut the number to two. The card is late game gas.

Cheers

[wbw]

Hi Guys,

I tested a new list with 3x dig thru time vs uwr miracles and uwr delver. The card is nuts pre board. However, I might cut the number to two. The card is late game gas.

Cheers

Dig Through Time or Treasure Cruise?

By the way, based on the first SCG Open after KTK, it seems that TC is the real deal. The UR shell tha won the Open looked very focused to capitalize the new card, but it should also be great alongside the classic resource denial of Canadian Thresh, even considering the obvious bad sinergy with goose. An aspect I haven't seen discussed is how it makes FoW "better", since it recovers the lost card advantage.

[cheerios]

IMO DTT is better for rug since it's an instant and doesn't eat your gy the same way tc does. The card quality of seing 7 cards is no joke.

Cheers

[wbw]

IMO DTT is better for rug since it's an instant and doesn't eat your gy the same way tc does. The card quality of seing 7 cards is no joke.

Cheers

Ok, just checking. I agree that the higher card quality and the instant speed should not be overlooked, but TC sheer card advantage and the possibility of casting it for only U makes very hard to determine which one is better.

[cheerios]

Yeah, I'm also torn between the two. We'll have to wait a few months before everyone settles with a new "stock" list :)

Cheers

[Zombie]

IMO DTT is better for rug since it's an instant and doesn't eat your gy the same way tc does. The card quality of seing 7 cards is no joke.

Cheers

?

They're both 8-drops with Delve. Nothing prevents you from casting Cruise as 1U: Draw 3.

[SORO]

Whooooaaaaaa, whoa whoa whoa, whoa. No. Not even a little bit.

Look, Treasure Cruise is a very playable Legacy card, as is Dig through Time. But neither of them are particularly attractive to any deck running Goyf/DRS/Goose. Sure, BURG and BUG Delver might use it as a 1-2 of (at most), but it doesn't fit in RUG Delver unless you cut Geese and don't look back. But similar to Hooting Mandrills, I see no reason to do this.

RUG is still fine. Treasure Cruise might shake Legacy up a bit, but it is just another high-mana threat that can be Dazed, or Forced for actual value. Have you ever forced a Tombstalker? Feels pretty good. In Legacy, the GY matters to nearly all decks in some way, shape, or form. Those decks that don't care about it at all will be the only ones that can really abuse Treasure Cruise, and yet they will still be vulnerable to Daze/Spell Pierce/Force/Pyroblast.

Now, let's look at us. Do we want this effect? For U, a sorcery-speed Ancestral is certainly very very good. For 2U, it's still very good. For anything more than 3 mana, this card becomes a liability for us, and only become useful in long games. If it were an instant, it'd be a lot better.

However, exiling 7 cards is insanely bad for us. Even when we do hit Threshold (generally between turns 3-6), we have NO interest in losing it. Think of how bad you feel when RiP hits the board, or even just a timely Relic. We can't afford to lose our graveyard at all, let alone be forced to eat it to cast our "best" cantrip. Sure, we want to draw 3 cards (who doesn't), but not at the cost of making our other cards worse or nigh useless.

RUG is a velocity deck. We try to stay ahead of our opponent the entire game, and win before they can execute their plan. We are unfavored against just about every other deck in the format if we allow the game to go long. Often, we will win with less cards than them, but more board presence. We would gladly sacrifice power for speed. We don't play Jace, Ancestral Visions, Snapcaster, or any other silly cards that actual represent card advantage, we simply want card quality in the early game, and we want to extend the early game to forever. Treasure Cruise is a late-game card. Even if you could cast it consistently for 2-4 mana and it didn't hurt Goyf/Goose, it would still be a bit unfavored for us. When you draw 3 cards, but none of them answer that Batterskull or Griselbrand, what does it matter? If you could instant-speed the Cruise, it would be much better, since you could dig for Bolts, FoW + Blue card, or Daze + Pierce in response to your opponent's attempt to win. But at sorcery speed at the cost of 66% of your threats' power, this is not our card. And we don't need it either.

People will play these cards in Legacy, for sure. Perhaps even Black Delver/DRS lists. But we will still continue to function the same as always, with very little changes. This isn't TNN, and we survived that problem just fine (sort-of). This is simply "expensive Jace" at sorcery speed. There are so many must-answer threats out there already, that having to face Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time is just another humdrum daily job for us Delverers. Delver > Delve. Daze, Stifle, and Wasteland still hold these cards at bay.

No, RUG Delver is not dead. Feel free to get greedy and play 4 colors. But RUG will remain the most consistent Delver deck in the format in my opinion.

Thank you for your great answer. RUG is my favourite deck, and I hope it will continue doing well, but I think UR Delver is now more competitive. I don´t say including Treasure Cruise and Delve cards is a good idea, but I´m afraid that decks that use those cards will beat us.

I´m just saying that, until last week, awesome players like Matt Hoey and Jacob Wilson could win any SCG tournament with a Canadian, and I think this won´t happen for a long time, because they surely will choose another archetype.

[wcm8]

I definitely think every Delver deck wants to be playing 3-4 Treasure Cruise. The question for RUG needs to be asking: is adding Green to play Mongoose/Goyf and have a few additional sideboard options actually worth it as opposed to just playing straight UR? With UR you get a more stable (i.e. Wasteland-proof) mana-base, your creatures *don't* rely on the graveyard, AND you get to play Blood Moon -- which is a savage beating against many of the format's best decks.

Goyf is powerful, particularly against Tribal decks, but it seems like UR can just go over the top against those regardless. Mongoose is great against targeted removal, but nowadays White decks have Terminus and Council's Judgement, Black decks have Liliana and other non-targeted removal. Most decks in general just don't care as much about a 3/3.

Red creatures are pretty competitive: Monastery Swiftspear is an aggressive threat that doesn't non-bo with your mana denial strategy like Goblin Guide did, and Young Pyromancer, while fragile, provides a decent clock and chump blockers if he can survive a couple turns. True-Name Nemesis is also an option, though 3-mana is tough for a deck like RUG that wants to keep up blue mana.

Look, I'm not saying that RUG is *dead*, because as long as people are playing fetchlands and duals, its mana denial strategy will remain a valid approach. But the format is changing: Deathrite Shaman is enemy #1, and plenty of decks are adapted to deal with RUG's threats and mana denial. RUG has no real answer to a resolved True-Name Nemesis. UWr Control decks are tough to beat now with all the removal they pack. And opposing Delver decks *will* be playing Treasure Cruise, so it's not just Shardless BUG that's going to be Ancestral'ing in Legacy. The only obvious answers I can think of for RUG are to A) change its creature configuration and run Treasure Cruise itself; B) run maindeck/additional REB/Pyroblast; or C) some combination of the above.

Honestly at this point it seems like if you want to play a Stifle/Wasteland/Daze tempo Delver build, you're better off going with playing straight UR for the stability, UWR for superiority over creature decks, or BUG for access to a strong midrange gameplan. The common thread for these 3 is also the fact that they can run 3-4 Treasure Cruise with no real drawbacks. The appeal of RUG over these other options just doesn't seem to be there anymore.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Not to derail the thread too much, but what would be your idea of a stragiht UR Stifle Delver without green? I'm especially concerned about the lacking monsters (much less about the sb options), because Mongoose is very hard to get rid of and Goyf is pretty fast clock. There are no such an options n UR (we cannot count Stiflenaught, at least since RTR brought Decay), and the deck cannot rely only on Delvers.
There is Pyromancer, there is Lavamancer but he kinda competes over gy resources with Cruise, there are many cmc2 or cmc3 flyers (most notably VClique and then maybe... hm, Serendib Efreet?), but there's no beef in cmc2 slot similar to Goyf. I dislike the idea to rely completely on TNNs, esp. as the 3-drops should be limited in numbers.
So what? Monastery Swiftspear? That elemental that eats spells for +1/+1 counters? Kiln Fiend?

[wcm8]

Straight Ur would be:
4 delver
4 Swiftspear
4 pyromancer

And then it can play 1-2 copies of V clique, Snapcaster, or TNN if it really wants to. 2 lavancers in the board.

[wbw]

But straight UR is possibly better without Stifle, like Bob Huang's list. It is so aggressive that it forgoes the mana denial package.

In that sense, I think that all flavor of Delver decks are still viable. If you want to...

Hit fast - play UR;
Be more midrange - play BUG;
Be more control - play UWR;
Make your opponent's life miserable - play RUG.

Canadian is still the one that can put better use of the mana denial triad. Also there is nothing preventing us to use some TC in the flex slots. Perhaps we should tune the SB with extras REBs or Envelops. And we still play permission, so there is also a nice tempo gain to be made by countering a TC, specially if they have other copies in hand.

By the way, the other threads are all doom and gloom about RUG... I still don't get how they delving their cemiteries will make our mongooses smaller [\sarcasm]. Let's hope they really do believe in this and then I wish that all fellow RUG players have a good time punishing people who will forget to play around Stifle. Whenever the metagame thinks Canadian Thresh is dead, it is actually a great time to play it.

[Contract Killer]

But straight UR is possibly better without Stifle, like Bob Huang's list. It is so aggressive that it forgoes the mana denial package.

In that sense, I think that all flavor of Delver decks are still viable. If you want to...

Hit fast - play UR;
Be more midrange - play BUG;
Be more control - play UWR;
Make your opponent's life miserable - play RUG.

Canadian is still the one that can put better use of the mana denial triad. Also there is nothing preventing us to use some TC in the flex slots. Perhaps we should tune the SB with extras REBs or Envelops. And we still play permission, so there is also a nice tempo gain to be made by countering a TC, specially if they have other copies in hand.

By the way, the other threads are all doom and gloom about RUG... I still don't get how they delving their cemiteries will make our mongooses smaller [\sarcasm]. Let's hope they really do believe in this and then I wish that all fellow RUG players have a good time punishing people who will forget to play around Stifle. Whenever the metagame thinks Canadian Thresh is dead, it is actually a great time to play it.

I definitely agree with your synopsis of delver decks. As for playing against TC I actually don't think it's that hard. I jammed a few games against the new UR build and he TC twice one game, but it didn't change the fact that I had a 3/3 goose he couldn't deal with and he was stuck on 2 lands. What I'm trying to point out is RUG's Philosophy hasn't changed:
Stick a threat, protect it, counter only what you have to.

It felt a lot like playing against Shardless BUG. Even if they resolve ancestral visions it's not the end of the world. Despite them being up on cards if we have a better board state (they're down on lands, we have threats they don't, they're within burn range etc) card advantage does not matter.

All that being said I do think TC/DTT is something that RUG could use, but from my testing it seems like you have to limit it to 2 due to the high "cmc" and it's issues with goose. This is currently what I'm running with, but I'm still not 100% sold on 7 fetches and 3 stifles:

12 crits
4 delver
4 goose
4 goyf

21 instant
4 brainstorm
4 daze
4 force
4 lightning bolt
3 stifle
2 spell pierce

10 sorcery
4 ponder
4 chain lightning
2 treasure cruise

17 lands
7 fetch
3 trop
3 volc
4 wasteland

SB
2 pyroblast
2 flusterstorm
2 submerge
1 vendilion clique
1 sulfur elemental
1 sylvan library
2 rough and tumble
2 grafdigger's cage
1 krosan grip
1 ancient grudge

[Quasim0ff]

I definitely agree with your synopsis of delver decks. As for playing against TC I actually don't think it's that hard. I jammed a few games against the new UR build and he TC twice one game, but it didn't change the fact that I had a 3/3 goose he couldn't deal with and he was stuck on 2 lands. What I'm trying to point out is RUG's Philosophy hasn't changed:
Stick a threat, protect it, counter only what you have to.

It felt a lot like playing against Shardless BUG. Even if they resolve ancestral visions it's not the end of the world. Despite them being up on cards if we have a better board state (they're down on lands, we have threats they don't, they're within burn range etc) card advantage does not matter.

All that being said I do think TC/DTT is something that RUG could use, but from my testing it seems like you have to limit it to 2 due to the high "cmc" and it's issues with goose. This is currently what I'm running with, but I'm still not 100% sold on 7 fetches and 3 stifles:

12 crits
4 delver
4 goose
4 goyf

21 instant
4 brainstorm
4 daze
4 force
4 lightning bolt
3 stifle
2 spell pierce

10 sorcery
4 ponder
4 chain lightning
2 treasure cruise

17 lands
7 fetch
3 trop
3 volc
4 wasteland

SB
2 pyroblast
2 flusterstorm
2 submerge
1 vendilion clique
1 sulfur elemental
1 sylvan library
2 rough and tumble
2 grafdigger's cage
1 krosan grip
1 ancient grudge

IF you want to play 17 lands, I'd HIGHLY advocate playing Probes over Spell Pierce. You effectively play 13 lands, not 17, with 4x wasteland.

[wcm8]

It felt a lot like playing against Shardless BUG. Even if they resolve ancestral visions it's not the end of the world. Despite them being up on cards if we have a better board state (they're down on lands, we have threats they don't, they're within burn range etc) card advantage does not matter.

But Shardless is typically one of the hardest matchups for RUG. Delver mirror matches can go either way, but if one deck is drawing 3 cards from a single spell and the other isn't, my bet goes towards the deck playing Ancestral. Bob Huang's UR deck is only the first iteration of 'Format: Delver Cruise'; give it a little time and the format will figure out the best configuration(s).

Also, unlike Ancestral Vision, TCruise can't be Stifled, nor is its casting forecasted. So you need to have the Spell Pierce/Envelop/REB in hand or you're going to quickly get behind. This card hits RUG where it hurts -- that is, after the first several turns of initial volley and each player just about emptying their hand, this is when TC gets cast and refuels. Yes, RUG will still occasionally steal wins via Stifle/Daze/Wasteland, but the midgame becomes a much more frightening prospect. You won't have nearly as many games where you get to win on the back of a Mongoose as your opponent is in draw-go-mode.

That's why I am posing the question: what decks in Legacy does RUG beat where a straight-UR configuration wouldn't simply be better? I'd rather be running UR against Miracles, Shardless, Esper, etc... because you have a bunch of trump cards, your threats aren't reliant on the graveyard, and you get to run TCruise with no drawback. Do Mongoose and Goyf really trump having access to Blood Moon, Price of Progress, and no drawback with Cruising?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm not sure if Goyfs do or do not trump Blood Moon, but last time I checked, Moon had no p/t.

I think that the speed of RUG and the power of its creatures might balance the UR's stability and its access to bombs like Moon and Cruise. While Moon is pretty sick against the meta, and Cruise/DTT are amazing cards, RUG may still win via the usual StifleWasteDaze shenanigans followed (or preceded) by fast threat that ends the game asap.
I played some games against UR Delve&Cruise and honestly, it wasn't that bad as I expected. Their threats are small, they got troubles in dealing with both Goyf and Mongoose and the CA shouldn't matter that much, if you got board pressence that they cannot easily ruin. Ok, Pyromancer makes the math hard, as it chumps Goyf forever, but then again we got sb with Rough that makes lots and lots delve fodder for mere 1R.
But yeah, it definitely wasn't fine tuned yet.
Btw I expect less Submerges in sideboards once RUG drops in favor. That's good. That's pretty good. Even now some people play just one or two Submerges.

[SORO]

Hi, guys. I´ve been looking to this deck: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=14749&iddeck=109214

Do you think Young Pyromancer is compatible as the Mongoose with a Tempo strategy? Would we degrade our deck to much in order to include TC?

[wcm8]

Hi, guys. I´ve been looking to this deck: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=14749&iddeck=109214

Do you think Young Pyromancer is compatible as the Mongoose with a Tempo strategy? Would we degrade our deck to much in order to include TC?

Young Pyromancer has a kind of psuedo-shroud, since you can generate multiple tokens which would require multiple targeted-removal spells. Mongoose is hardly a threat on turn 1, so YP coming down a bit later is mostly irrelevant. This list seems like a great way of RUG adapting to the question posed by Treasure Cruise. I give it a thumbs up. And winning an 82-person tournament answers the question of its competitiveness.

[Emo]

Young Pyromancer has a kind of psuedo-shroud, since you can generate multiple tokens which would require multiple targeted-removal spells. Mongoose is hardly a threat on turn 1, so YP coming down a bit later is mostly irrelevant. This list seems like a great way of RUG adapting to the question posed by Treasure Cruise. I give it a thumbs up. And winning an 82-person tournament answers the question of its competitiveness.

I do like this list as it seems very competitive and I agree with Young Pyromancer (I just don't think mongoose cuts it in the meta anymore regardless of the disynergy with Treasure cruise); however, concerning sb, I am guessing the Jitte is meant to answer elves and D&T, are there any better sb options for these mathcups?