The Best Delve Cards in Legacy - Comparison and Contrast

[Captain Hammer]

In eternal formats, Delve is a very powerful mechanic thanks to the ubiquity of cantrips, fetch lands and undercosted instants. Prior to Khans, there were a total of 3 Delve cards ever printed, and the only decent one among them, Tombstalker still holds up as one of the best beaters in format.

Now that Khans printed a whole slew of powerful Delve cards, I wanted to compare them.

Delve cards in general all share the same pros and cons.

Pros
Dodges Counterbalance
Can Hurt Opposing Goyfs/Deathrite Shamans

Cons
Rarely castable until turn 3.
Weaker in decks that don’t play many fetchlands/cantrips/smallpox.
Vulnerable to gravehate (but it's unlikely your opponent will side in gravehate for 2-3 Delve cards unless the rest of your deck is also yard dependent).
Can potentially weaken your own Goyfs/Deathrites should your deck be playing either card.
Bad in multiples so you should probably play no more than a total of 2-3 delve cards in any deck.

Its for that last reason why I feel that most legacy decks can support no more than one delve card if any, and they will need to pick which effect is the most important for them.

The choices are as follows...


Draw (Blue)


Dig Thru Time 6UU Delve Instant - Look at the top 7 cards of your library, put 2 into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library.

Decks that should consider it - Sneak and Show, Food Chain Griffins or any other deck that could make use of a stronger, cheaper Fact or Fiction and can afford the UU cost.


Treasure Cruise 7U Delve Sorcery - Draw 3 cards.

Decks that should consider it - Fairie Stompy or similar decks that could have trouble generating UU mana for Dig Thru Time.


Removal (Black/Blue)


Dead Drop 9B Delve Sorcery - Target player sacrifices 2 creatures.

Decks that should consider it - Possibly too costly to see play even with delve but I could see this ending up in Pox or possibly midrange decks like the Rock or MBC. Pox in particular can afford to play powerful asymmetric effects such as this even if they are narrow since pox regularly needs to discard multiple cards from it's hand anyways.


Murderous Cut 4B Delve Instant - Destroy target creature.

Decks that should consider it - The effect is weaker but the cost is much more palatable so I could this being considered by the same decks as above if Dead Drop proves too expensive.


Set Adrift 5U Delve Sorcery - Put target non land card on top of it's owner's library.

Decks that should consider it - The effect is weaker but the cost is much more palatable when compared to Treasure Cruise so I could this being considered by blue/combo decks that opt not to play the delve draw options available to blue.


Beatdown (Black/Green)


Become Immense 5G Delve Instant - Target creatures gets +6/+6 until end of turn.

Decks that should consider it - Seems absolutely amazing in Berserk/Infect Stompy decks alongside fetches, cantrips and Gitaxan Probes.


Hooting Mandrills 5G Delve Creature - 4/4 Trample

Decks that should consider it - Seems like it would be a solid beater in Zoo or Delver variants.


Sultai Scavenger 5B Delve Creature - 3/3 Flyer

Decks that should consider it - None. I can't think of any deck that would prefer this to Tombstalker or Hooting Mandrills.


Necropolis Fiend 7BB Delve Creature - 4/5 Flyer, X, Tap: Exile X cards in your graveyard, Target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn

Decks that should consider it - None. It's a less aggressive but more controllish variation of Tombstalker but I think the latter is the superior choice.


Empty the Pits XXBBBB Delve Instant - Put X 2/2s zombie tokens into play tapped.

Decks that should consider it - Possibly a Belcher variant that opts to go black instead of red.

[Dice_Box]

I honestly think most of them leave much to be desired. The Green beater might see some play, but it's not going to do anything too special. The Giant Growth I think is a bit too highly costed too see play in Legacy Infect, but it might see some play in modern.

As normal, the two Blue toys look the best, but I am not exactly excited for either. At first I though maybe Miracles might use them, but people much smarter that I in the Miracles thread shot that idea down. You might see them show up here and there in other decks, a one of draw 3 in a control shell might happen, but it's hardly ground breaking due to the investment required to make an early tempo play. Later on in a game, Control has other toys it can use.

I am not sold, the cards just cost too much. If we get more and they are good, maybe we might see a kind of Dredge/Delve deck, but at this point I see a lot of promise but no pay out.

[trollking21]

Dig through time seems very very good in a deck like sneak and show.
I imagine that it will see a decent amount of play as 1-2 of, as it provides a lot of resillancy at little cost. It's a very powerful effect but pretty bad in multiples.
I could even see possibly popping up in some of the fair decks, but I don't think it's quite as good there.

[apple713]

it would at best be a 1-2 of in sneak and show. It would replace the intuition spot but that being said it doesn't actually do better than intuition. It is likely to end up costing the same as intuition and achieve the same goal of assembling your combo. Anyone who's played with the deck knows that 7 cards may not be enough sometimes. For such a large investment you want more solidified results. Also note that many versions have cut intuition entirely from the deck for more reliable means of searching like SDT.

TLDR : It not good enough, because its highly conditional.

the ancestral might be good as a 1 of but more cute and win more than relevant.


murderous cut fits well into team america

[Fatal]

Treasure Cruise - High Tide would play some for sure

[Darkenslight]

Treasure Cruise - High Tide would play some for sure

That depends entirely on whether it improves the consistency of the deck or not, and my inital instincts say no. Now, Dig Through Time might make a splash in Solidarity (instant High Tide combo) because it's basically a double-Impulse. But only two seem to have anything more than potential.