[Article]Eternal Europe: Khan's Dangerous Cards

[Offler]

Just looking at Carsten's UR delver legacy. Actually not bad usage of Treasure cruise.

But the math for the card is simple. Remove 7 cards, pay U/Pay 7U to draw 3. I wouldnt play more than two of these, but that is just a matter of opinion.

[Lemnear]

Just looking at Carsten's UR delver legacy. Actually not bad usage of Treasure cruise.

But the math for the card is simple. Remove 7 cards, pay U/Pay 7U to draw 3. I wouldnt play more than two of these, but that is just a matter of opinion.

Tbh, it's a matter of math of getting 28 in your graveyard in total to fully profit from 4 Treasure Cruise. My gut feeling is that you want some Thought Scour or Mental Notes in there

[Hardcore]

What annoys me is that the black delver cards are crap in legacy.

[Dice_Box]

Delver or Delve?

[Lemnear]

What annoys me is that the black delver cards are crap in legacy.

So far at least. I have high hopes for the upcoming expansions with that mechanic. Bets on seeing the mechanic gravestorm in this block as well?

[Valtrix]

I really like dig through time over treasure cruise. The instant speed is highly relevant, but the most important thing is the card quality and selection. Sure, you can draw three cards with a treasure cruise, but between drawing another cruise you can't use or just drawing a land you don't need it doesn't seem that great. Dig Through Time on the other hand looks pretty insane to interact with itself. You get to see seven cards and pick two you need. This means if you can't support a second dig through time, you just don't pick it up from the seven you need. Or, if you can, then you can chain a dig through time to see 14 cards deep. That amount of searching is just insane, on top of the card advantage it gives you. I think this was a very overlooked application of dig through time in the article.

Dig through time also has more relevant applications in a combo/control deck, which I think is somewhere where it would find a much better place than a pure control deck. For example, putting together stage-depths or thopter sword. (Although I dislike thopter/sword because it's reliant on the yard like dig through time).

Snapcaster mage might also be very good with these cards but not overloading your deck with them, but being flexible enough to recast them when needed.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

This is something to be debated. In the meantime, forced adoption of the clan names drastically changes the flavor and, by extension, fun of the game in an unpleasant way, and is therefore something that truly does need to be discussed and protested.

This.

While Naya, Esper and Jund were adopted, these are not, they are forced and it's silly. Magic is silly. It's silly enough even without using the forced terms. I'm not going to act more silly than necessary.
Also, Jund, Naya, Bant, Esper, these marked some special decks. They carry/ied an information about decklist and game plan, while the same is/was done for the other decks by the color shortcut or wutnot.

Bant - UGW creatures with permission and StP
Naya - RGW Zoo
Esper - control in appropriate tricolor setting
Jund (pronounce "yoond" in our lgs, similarly how Mirodin is pronounced "mirahtor" or FutureSight is pronounced "feature siege"), so Jund - BRG creatures, discard and removal

Jeskai Delver brings no information. Sultai delver brings no infromation. RUG Delver does. Should we all start using senseless names just so that SCG may sell the products or w/e the reason is?

I'm willing to use these terms once they become established and linked to some decks, and if they become a communal aspect, but as long as its just mere word-games for the sake of word-games, gfys with the whole article, how ever brilliant it might be.

[Lemnear]

I think Dig Through Time should replace Enter the Infinity in OmniTell as it's never really dead. Guess it's awesome in any S&T deck

[PirateKing]

This.

Beyond lacking information, it's replacing a one syllable name with a two syllable name. Esper and Jund got picked up because the alternative was actually pronouncing the three colors. Now you had a one and two syllable word doing the same thing. Easier to use in conversation, gets picked up.

The other three clans might get used, but RUG and BUG are impossible to defeat in depth of information and ease of conversation.

[Cire]

Maybe it's just me - but I like the names. Sultai Delver in my ears sounds better than BUG delver. Idk why - it just sounds good. But then again I'm the crazy person that will call any 4 color deck after the Nephelim, so . . . .

[rufus]

Maybe it's just me - but I like the names. Sultai Delver in my ears sounds better than BUG delver. Idk why - it just sounds good. But then again I'm the crazy person that will call any 4 color deck after the Nephelim, so . . . .

You going to say "Abzan" three times fast and tell me it's better than "Necra"?

[Ellomdian]

I think Dig Through Time should replace Enter the Infinity in OmniTell as it's never really dead. Guess it's awesome in any S&T deck

... that can afford to wait until it has 5+ cards in the GY until it goes off.

I think people are seriously underestimating how hard it is to 'accidentally' get delve fodder in the GY early. Fetch, Discard to Thoughtseize, Ponder, Brainstorm, Spell Pierce - typically at that point I want to be killing them, not digging. If you want a Tutor, run Intuition...

Know what Treasure Cruise is? It's AK, at Sorcery speed - an Engine-esque card that just draws more cards. Don't get me wrong, I would love to live in a world (for a while) where AK was the Bee's Knees in Legacy, but it requires too much setup, and the decks that benefit most from it aren't very strong currently.

[Lemnear]

... that can afford to wait until it has 5+ cards in the GY until it goes off.

I think people are seriously underestimating how hard it is to 'accidentally' get delve fodder in the GY early. Fetch, Discard to Thoughtseize, Ponder, Brainstorm, Spell Pierce - typically at that point I want to be killing them, not digging. If you want a Tutor, run Intuition...

Know what Treasure Cruise is? It's AK, at Sorcery speed - an Engine-esque card that just draws more cards. Don't get me wrong, I would love to live in a world (for a while) where AK was the Bee's Knees in Legacy, but it requires too much setup, and the decks that benefit most from it aren't very strong currently.

Well, Treasure Cruise it at least a card that makes people ponder to break the decade-old shell of tempo-decks and together with Dig Through Time, it's the first time blue control can take advantage of it's own graveyard since the printing of Snapcaster Mage. What I like most about those cards is that they interact poorly in current UW control shells like Miracles and potentially create attempts to move away from SDT + Terminus in favor of the blue Delve cards and Supreme Verdict.

What more can we ask for Legacy?

[dune2k]

I think Dig Through Time should replace Enter the Infinity in OmniTell as it's never really dead. Guess it's awesome in any S&T deck

Are you kidding or did you name the wrong card?
Everything else does not make sense.

[TsumiBand]

I'm not sure why people are so attached to the Apocalypse names that they weren't using before Khans of Tarkir threatened to rechristen the wedges.

Junk was always BGW Good Stuff, right? It was never 'Necra'. Very few if any players would have processed 'Necra Midrange' as quickly as 'Junk Midrange'. Dega has never even been a thing, save like, a fairly recent deck in Modern, and it's just called 'RWB Burn' or '3-color Burn' but almost never was the phrase 'Dega' attached to the deck in a mainstream way. At least maybe not until KoT popped up and made everyone Google the original wedge nicknames so they could be like "why not Ceta, I always called it Ceta, i'm fucken OG"

So many names are just based in tradition anyway, that their relative informative status depends on a lot of context. Any deck with "Thresh" in the name is likely to have almost no actual cards with Threshold, save maaaaybe ye olde Nimbly-Bimbly Mongoose. Affinity doesn't have to play a single card with Affinity on it - honestly there are probably more cards with Metalcraft in the deck than Affinity, yet we call it Affinity because the deck 'evolved' or whatever. Which is sort of the old riddle about the boat with all its boards replaced over years and years; at some point every board is replaced due to wear and tear, but at what point did it stop being the original boat and become a new boat?

I've done this rant before but inasmuch as naming conventions are concerned I'm usually fine with "{word/acronym for colors in deck} {central card/mechanic defining the deck's functional premise} {clarifying word for deck's overall strategy (aggro/control/combo/midrange/prison/turbofog/santa/pillowfort/asl/tight sight/benzo)}" and I find pet names less than helpful, but then when you brew something you kind of want to release it into the wild and hear people talk about it, so I guess I get it. I mean if you see a random deck and you lose to it, think about how you tell the story to your friends -- "Ohhhh it was this, like.... Blue-Black-Green midrange control garbage, with like Moroii and shit" "dude how did you lose to that" "whatever man he was using like Quicken to cast Mutilate EOT so he got to keep his Inkwell Leviathan, totally blew me out, so fucking random". That's practically the name of the deck already; the colors, the deck's MO, some of the weird cards in the deck.

[Lemnear]

Are you kidding or did you name the wrong card?
Everything else does not make sense.

Well, instead of running Enter the Infinite as a clunky 12 mana spell and as a playset, uncastable unless you have Omniscience out, it should be fair to ponder over DTT as a hardcastable super-Impulse to find your combo enabler (or kill-condition once Omniscience is in play).

[btm10]

... that can afford to wait until it has 5+ cards in the GY until it goes off.

I think people are seriously underestimating how hard it is to 'accidentally' get delve fodder in the GY early. Fetch, Discard to Thoughtseize, Ponder, Brainstorm, Spell Pierce - typically at that point I want to be killing them, not digging. If you want a Tutor, run Intuition...

Know what Treasure Cruise is? It's AK, at Sorcery speed - an Engine-esque card that just draws more cards. Don't get me wrong, I would love to live in a world (for a while) where AK was the Bee's Knees in Legacy, but it requires too much setup, and the decks that benefit most from it aren't very strong currently.

I think that Dig Through Time will see play in either a non-Miracles U/W or UWx shell (I remain unsure as to how good DTT-U/W will be relative to Miracles; the ability to seamlessly integrate CounterTop seems to give Miracles a big upper hand) or in BUG Control. Treasure Cruise is going to be a solid 2-of in U/R Delver or some other Counter-Burn deck that just cares about raw card advantage because its pieces are (broadly) interchangeable. The cards don't need to be good (or even castable) on turn 1 or 2 to be good by themselves, especially if they have synergy with the rest of the deck - as both Dig and Treasure Cruise do with decks composed almost entirely of instants, sorceries, and fetchlands.

[lordofthepit]

RUG, BUG, and Junk just roll off the tongue much better than the alternatives. I can see myself eventually learning the wedge names for Patriot and Italia though, but that remains to be seen.

And of course, excellent article, Carsten. I'm a bit skeptical that these cards will see widespread play, especially at the level you predict, but when you have a different opinion than I do, it's always enough to make me re-evaluate my own.

[iamajellydonut]

Italia

To be fair, this actually is widely known as "Dega". The trouble is that it's a shitty color mix and therefore not played enough actually care about.

[TheArchitect]

To be fair, this actually is widely known as "Dega". The trouble is that it's a shitty color mix and therefore not played enough actually care about.

I have never actually heard anyone refer to the color combinations as Dega in real life (or any of the other Apoc names for that matter). I am pretty sure using the Apoc names is just something people started to say on the internet in an attempt to establish hipster cred.