All B/R update speculation.

[honz]

Dude the last two weeks saw Maverick and Goblin getting T8 after what, years? Plus other hard to see decks like Lands and Tezzeret got both a win and a T8 respectively. We saw freaking Slivers in a T8.

One random goblins deck getting a single top8 isn't a good example of treasure cruise diversifying the format, it is more an example of luck and the power of most legacy decks to win on any given day based off of matchups and hands. Maverick has gotten about two top8s a month in big tournaments for a while now, not the first time in "years" by a long shot. Seeing punishing fire (in maverick and lands) doing well, as well as tezz maindeck leylines, is a good example on how prevalent TC delver is, and how it is warping the format around it. I'll give you slivers though, I have no idea what happened there...

TC being printed condensed blue archetypes into a single, easier to hate shell; aka the dump everything in my hand by T3. And that make cards like Punishing fire which basically kill everything Delver can play, or RIP extremely strong. That and Lifegain.
TC is also actually hateable whereas Brainstorm is not, so the card is already more fair by definition. It's good but let's not pretend it's actually Recall, and not way more like Visions.

I think the problem alot of people have is that TC isn't that hateable at all. If people bring in graveyard hate against TC delver, the only card it affects is TC. All it takes is 1 brainstorm or 1 FoW and that graveyard hate becomes a dead card. TC also largely ignores a lot of the traditional graveyard hate, like deathrite shaman, extirpate, or relic of progenitus.

The card is right now forcing the meta to change, and that's a beautiful thing. Even if Miracle become the top deck in 3 months from now (which i think it's the best deck right now but w/e), at least we'll see some change from everything is bluetempo.dec

Again, the card isn't forcing the meta to change. The best decks before TC were elves, storm, deathblade, delver, and decks designed to beat delver (D&T and miracles). The only difference now is that some of these decks got a new card to play.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

I think it speaks also to the known fact that we constantly learn in Vintage about Dredge. When Dredge seems worst, it is at it's best. As in, when people feel Dredge is "hated-out" they hedge on no one playing it and cut hate. The paradigm shifts and Dredge is good. When Dredge becomes good, people play the hate again and we cycle back through. I liked Dredge to a force of nature. It is always present and waiting for people to not be prepared.

Only thing now is that, with Containment Priest as the premier hatebear with the most applications game two (Sneak and Show, Reanimator, Vial and GSZ, Dredge's recurring creatures), which means any deck that runs white shouldn't even have to worry about Dredge game 2 and 3 if they're even considering hating out some other deck. More power to them if they're blue, because blue is blue.

[ShiftyKapree]

I personally see no problem with TC ya it does help the delver decks, but it also brings back Combo decks which make the format healthy again instead of fighting just DRS and abrupt decay decks every other round. I'm glad those decks are seeing less play the meta is already adjusting to TC by combo being back. Reanimater, SNT, TES, ANT, and Dredge all are viable again and can be played to tournament success as we've seen in the recent weeks. I also can now see Maverick list coming back into play which I for one am glad to play against. I primarily play RUG Delver but I recently started playing TES again bc the position it has in the current meta. Please just dump your hand while I combo off on turn 2-3. A goblins deck even top 8'd yesterday, even though I feel like the west coast Legacy isn't thriving like the East coast and Europe's scene. If anything is banworthy imo it would be Delver, it kills midrange decks and allows them to race combo at least for U/R and RUG with the burn spells. DRS is another card I would consider banning as it kills KOTR decks but as for now I'd like to see the results of Grand Prix NJ and a few other tournaments till the ban something. As far as banning cards in Modern, that banlist is a joke. Does JTMS really need to be banned? Is he that good?

[FoolofaTook]

Treasure Cruise reopens archetypes that have been shut down for years. That's why they're going to ban it. You can do Esper Landkill with TC to refill your hand and the opponent can also refill their hand similarly but they can't play more than one land a turn and your Trinisphere and Nether Void are making that exercise futile.

I predict a Treasure Cruise ban in one of the next two updates. WotC doesn't want anything to get in the way of their vision for the game and Sinkhole has long been out of favor in that regards.

[Lord Seth]

The tweeted reports I've seen are all about Modern, not Legacy. And, well, in Modern Treasure Cruise has done a number on the format; U/R Delver and Burn-splash-Cruise represent 21% of decks in Modern top 8s over the past two months, but a whopping 44% over past two weeks.

If you're using MTG Top 8 at a source, that's false. UR Delver and "Burn-splash-Cruise" is 40%, not 44%; you are including the Burn decks not running Treasure Cruise in your percentage.

[HrishiQQ]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

[MGB]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

The format has other conditional Draw-3s in Ancestral Vision, Standstill, and Thirst for Knowledge. However, the conditions involved in these make them far less consistent and thus far less oppressive to the format. All Treasure Cruise asks is that people play Magic as normal and then they will be able to Draw-3 cards by Turn 4+ every game. Ancestral Vision requires you to wait three long turns after topdecking it, which makes it significantly weaker. Standstill requires you to have a winning or neutral board state AND to play 4+ manlands. Thirst for Knowledge requires you to play 25+ artifacts.

Simply put, Treasure Cruise is not conditional enough.

[Barook]

Dude the last two weeks saw Maverick and Goblin getting T8 after what, years? Plus other hard to see decks like Lands and Tezzeret got both a win and a T8 respectively. We saw freaking Slivers in a T8.
Not to say about decks exploring new win conditions, like Helm + RIP actually being main deckable now, or Delvers deck playing Pyromancers. Red presence in deck hasn't been this high in years i think.

TC being printed condensed blue archetypes into a single, easier to hate shell; aka the dump everything in my hand by T3. And that make cards like Punishing fire which basically kill everything Delver can play, or RIP extremely strong. That and Lifegain.
TC is also actually hateable whereas Brainstorm is not, so the card is already more fair by definition. It's good but let's not pretend it's actually Recall, and not way more like Visions.

The card is right now forcing the meta to change, and that's a beautiful thing. Even if Miracle become the top deck in 3 months from now (which i think it's the best deck right now but w/e), at least we'll see some change from everything is bluetempo.dec

I wouldn't take an inbred meta like e.g. Oakland too serious, considering Eternal Weekend was completely overrun by Delver and MTGO also being ~40% Delver decks.

I would at least wait until the GP where blue can rear its ugly consistency head to judge the situation.

[FoolofaTook]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

The thing about Treasure Cruise is that it produces plus 2 cards of a quality that varies depending on how powerful the cards that sit alongside it are. I don't lose to UR Delver much because I don't care if they Treasure Cruise given they're going to get cantrips, burn and relatively weak creatures out of it. When I run into BUG Delver playing Treasure Cruise it's a bit of a different story, because their cards are more powerful 1-for-1 than UR Delver. It's harder for them to chain through 2 TC's though because they want to sit with some cards in hand waiting to react to your plays.

The nightmare would be a list that had really powerful cards and could also easily cast Treasure Cruise. That's when it becomes broken.

[Lord Seth]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the point of this card was in any way to "help" Legacy, or possibly to even do much of anything to Legacy. Most likely it was just intended as an interesting card draw spell in Standard/Limited.

[davelin]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the point of this card was in any way to "help" Legacy, or possibly to even do much of anything to Legacy. Most likely it was just intended as an interesting card draw spell in Standard/Limited.

Why do you say this? They've stated they design for eternal formats, they just don't explicitly test for it.

[HrishiQQ]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the point of this card was in any way to "help" Legacy, or possibly to even do much of anything to Legacy. Most likely it was just intended as an interesting card draw spell in Standard/Limited.

I'm not under such an impression.

[ahg113]

According to the logic of banning the extreme performers and with Miracles, Elves, BUG and D&T being the top 4 decks to beat, doesn't that result in having SFM, Cradle, Delver, DRS and SDT among the top 10 choices to ban? ;)

I'm just waiting for the usual torchwaving on combo

I think Delver, Terminus, and Show and Tell are the 3 most constraining cards in the format honestly.

Took a long time to reply and now it's disagreement time.

@HSCK - all three of those cards get worst with Brainstorm gone.
-While it had it's moment in the sun and it is full of derp, Show and Tell is not the boogyman of the format. It's a solvable problem, in essence like Dredge when one plans for it. Being symmetrical matters.
-Terminus isn't as good either without BS because it sits in your hand until T6, which an aggressive deck should be able to deal with, or it's constantly floated with a SDT and limiting the ability to shuffle one's deck. If a resolved JtMS puts one back on T4, well, there are a bunch of problems then.
-Delver is just a crap card poorly designed. But if Delver goes, then TNN, V. Clique and Snappy should all be ditched too, as off color blue cards that are over aggressive. Said it before, reiterating again- happy to trade 4 awful blue creatures for BS to stay legal.

@Lemnar - agree with some, others not so much
-Cradle is a niche card really only seeing play in Elves. Maybe if it were in Cheerios and some other greater than 0 # of decks it would make a difference. Banning BS discussions are perverted when it becomes neuter green combo.
-SDT banning this and not BS doesn't make sense. While SDT filters the top of your deck, and sometimes draws a card in a pinch, it doesn't fix bad hands. The ability to hide cards from discard is a big beef with BS. If you are speaking of banning both, super cool. Mirri's Guile will be the premier deck top manipulator (after JtMS and Sylvan Library).
-DRS is a non-blue super tool that 1 blue deck makes use of. Don't see a problem with the card, it doesn't pitch to FoW. Banning BS discussions are perverted when it becomes ban G/B creatures.
-SFM isn't as big a problem as Batterskull. More in favor of banning that card than SFM. Cause tutor effects are good for everyone?
-Delver, yup. And Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V = "Delver is just a crap card poorly designed. But if Delver goes, then TNN, V. Clique and Snappy should all be ditched too, as off color blue cards that are over aggressive. Said it before, reiterating again- happy to trade 4 awful blue creatures for BS to stay legal."

So in summation, some of the offered cards are straw-man comparisons (Cradle, SFM, Terminus). Others make some sense (DRS, SDT), and between HSCK and Lemnar, if they're willing to go the extra mile Delver is an accepted and known abomination that banning (with friends) could make improvements.

[Fatal]

From SCG - Getting On The Banwagon http://www.starcitygames.com/article...-Banwagon.html
agree mostly with everything what is written.

[Barook]

From SCG - Getting On The Banwagon http://www.starcitygames.com/article...-Banwagon.html
agree mostly with everything what is written.

"Ban/Restrict Ancestrall Recall 2.0 in every non-Standard format!" is hard to disagree with.

[Lemnear]

From SCG - Getting On The Banwagon http://www.starcitygames.com/article...-Banwagon.html
agree mostly with everything what is written.

Once more, Brian wrote an article with a lot of iffy comparisons to underline his point and still misses the most important point of 4 Delver of Secrets being in more than 25% of Legacy decks worldwide atm, as a testament of it's stupid efficiency in a half of dozen flavors

[DLifshitz]

Brian [...] still misses the most important point of 4 Delver of Secrets being in more than 25% of Legacy decks worldwide atm, as a testament of it's stupid efficiency in a half of dozen flavors

The section 'The Legacy Problems' begins with Brian basically saying just that. I mean, on the whole, the reasoning behind his recommendation to ban TC is not very deep, but he does give a half-decent bird's eye view of the format.

[Lemnear]

The section 'The Legacy Problems' begins with Brian basically saying just that. I mean, on the whole, the reasoning behind his recommendation to ban TC is not very deep, but he does give a half-decent bird's eye view of the format.

Yeah, he mentions that Delver was already oppressive, but suggests the new addition to the shell to be banned instead. How should that fix the previous Delver/Brainstorm/Ponder/Daze/FoW derp in various flavors we see/saw each week? Instead of Gitaxian Probe + Treasure Cruise, people will simply return to Stifle/Wasteland/Spell Pierce to support Delver. All the "ban TC" stuff is missing the point: no matter what cards you use, you use them to support your Delver to go the distance before your opponent can win. It's the fucking Autopilot of blue decks.

[Gheizen64]

Errata it to make it black problem solved

[Lemnear]

Errata it to make it black problem solved

That would at least remove most of the flavors and limit it to BUG ... Pyroblast proof ;P