All B/R update speculation.

[Rizso]

You said that no one was main decking blasts before TC. I was mearly pointing out that was not the case.

But there probly should have been before tc got released anyway. Red wasnt as good before tc as it is now. Swiftspear and youngpyromancer power has come from TC existing. Red is right now the 2nd most played color from least played with a print of a red and a blue card.

Treasure Cruise is really the best Red card printed :P

[Barook]

I like how everyone is using the fact that people are main decking pyroblasts as a reason to hate on brainstorm. Newsflash: this was for Treasure Cruise. Brainstorm has been around for years without main deck narrow hate like Pyro. It was a meta call because the UR mirror match often comes down to who resolves TC first.

Then why did Painter place in the Top 8 at GP Paris earlier this year? Same bullshit with 14/16 Brainstorm decks, an anti-blue deck (Painter) and Elves.

@jafar: So what? Blue would splash for it anyway if they can afford to run it. It certainly didn't stop them from running AD. Same thing with Pyro.

[CabalTherapy]

But there probly should have been before tc got released anyway. Red wasnt as good before tc as it is now. Swiftspear and youngpyromancer power has come from TC existing. Red is right now the 2nd most played color from least played with a print of a red and a blue card.

That has something to do with budged and people tending to netdeck and play simple stuff such as Delver Burn. UR ist one of the cheapest decks right now +easy to play = overload.

[testing32]

Point taken, my point was all these delver / stoneblade strategies now including Pyroblasts maindeck isn't suddenly because they realized brainstorm was good. Its to make sure your cruise resolves or to stop your opponent from cruisin'

No doubt. TC didn't help the situation. Delver doesn't help the situation. Ponder doesn't help. TNN doesn't help either.

But there is one card that makes all of this work. Have force in a match up that doesn't need it? Have 2 TCs early in the game and need some gas? Want to fill up your GY fast and fix that land flood in your hand? Want to run 16 lands in a non-combo deck? Got some bad luck an drew your batterskull?

Focusing on the 4th or 5th best card in a subsection of these decks (delver/TC) as the problem is disingenuous.

[Lemnear]

Ok i'll try to be more specificly clear. Playing every creature + Survival isn't an actual plan, so you have to actually choose which creatures goes in an actual survival list. If you're arguing that every good creature go in survival lists you're just wrong, because survival as a simple tutor in goodstuff.deck is worse than GSZ. It's way slower (1GG to fetch the first creature), not as versatile as GSZ for getting both accelleration and threats quickly, and require you to have a creature in hand to start. Those are all important points.
The strenght of survival is the ability to be an engine, with Vengevines, and Retainers/Ooze. You can make the survival plan your primary or secondary plan of the deck, but it's harder to make it secondary because of the amount of slots and sub-optimal cards it require, unlike the blue shell for example, that don't make you play "bad" cards at all.
So you can't simply take generic Maverick.deck and put Survivals in it, you have to put also the engine within it, else Survival isn't worth it.

You ignore that GSZ can only fetch green creatures while Survival can get you any. That's why I suggested running both alongside in the other thread for a certain redundancy. A peoblem I had with your list in the other thread was, that it was full of crappy 1-offs and three angles of attack based in the graveyard. I'm convinced that you can reduce the situational cards to a minimum. For example: Retainer + Griselbrand are two cards while Vengevines, Rootwalla and Memnite take up to 6. There is a lot of space for design. Who knows, maybe Squee + TNN can do the trick as well without having to run 4 mana 4/3 beaters?

And here come the first point: you're sacrificing slots for survival. Simply because survival isn't worth it unless you cheat vengevines, or legends, or oozes.

Have you considered that this is not the case? Maybe a steady stream of creatures (like DRS+SFM+Thalia+MoR+Reclamation Sage?) is enough? This would require testing.

And this bring also a quick consequence: your aggro plan is obviously not as good as a really good aggro decks, since you have several 4 cmcs (don't take me wrong, Vengevines are really good, but playing multiple 4cmc cards is not something you want to do in disruption-light decks, or against delver/burn decks) and legends, and 1/1s to trigger out VV. So you can't just play Maverick and add Survivals, you have to sacrifice a consistent amount of slots to it, making your "B" plan of beatdown worse. This isn't Vault/Key level of compact obviously.

Look back at what Survival did to zoo and goblins! The deck pushed both out of the format, because of the aggro-combo it was able to execute. Try to leave the idea behind that survival takes up a guaranteed dozen of spots.

Even if GSZ is one-shot, the greater amount of flexibility, much cheaper mana cost, and the ability to work without other specific cards in your hand put it far and above Survival as a "fair" tutor. It's the ability to double as an engine to cheat things into play that make Survival a strong card, without it, it's nothing amazing. And thanks to its speed, GSZ is better at getting answer creatures like Ooze or Qasali. Ooze is especially egregious. With survival, to remove 1 card from a grave with Ooze it cost 1GG+discard a creature+1G+G. If you want to get a cheap answer, survival isn't clearly the best choice here.

It offer the potential as an engine, but you can still use it to convert your Dryad Arbors you draw into rock-hard beatz. Your example of removing card from a graveyard with Survival costs exactly 1 green mana because Fairy Maccabre is a card. It's in fact cheaper than GSZ for Ooze. Just saying.

If your survival recurr plan is shut off via RiP for example, you don't only have 10+ bad draws in your deck, but you've probably also lost a mana + cards investment. Your "plan B" of aggro is nowhere as good when a big chunk of your deck are now subpar (Walla, Memnite, hardcast VV, Retainer) or simply uncastable cards (Iona/Devourer, Elesh but she's actually just 7 mana so castable if you get Cradle). Also, other decks "aggro" plans are now considerably faster or stronger with Delver, TNN and Pyromancers around, so by relative power levels, your beatdown plan get even worse.

The topic repeats. Get Walla, Memnite and shit out of your head. Dropping TNNs every fucking turn because you convert your Arbors & DRS' gets easily out of hand. I consider GSZ, Arbor and SotF an excellent combination, as you can tell.

Also, just for a mental exercise, what do you cut from a Maverick List to fit 3 VV, 1 Walla, 1 Memnite, 1 Retainer, 1 Elesh Norn, 4 Survivals? That's 11 cards. The Ooze shell is similar, but slightly slower and Devourer is crap by itself compared to Iona/Elesh which are sometimes hardcastable. You could probably cut the punishing fire suite, that's 4 cards. Then moms? A zenith or 2? It's easy to see why your beatdown plan can't be as good as actual non-survival lists.
Opportunity cost is absolutely relevant for SotF.

If you cut the P.Fire engine and some manadorks (because the list below doesn't even run Arbor) you can fit in Survival and stuff. You still have SFM, KotR and Vengevines for the aggro plan if we take the list below as a base, which I don't recommend, because I don't neccessarily see the need of MoR if you gain additional redundancy via survival

Punishing Maverick; Fabian Gorzgen

Spells (22+13=35)	Lands (25)	Sideboard (15)
2 Aven Mindcensor 1 Birds of Paradise 3 Deathrite Shaman 4 Knight of the Reliquary 4 Mother of Runes 1 Noble Hierarch 1 Qasali Pridemage 2 Scavenging Ooze 3 Stoneforge Mystic 1 Gaddock Teeg 1 Batterskull 3 Punishing Fire 4 Swords to Plowshares 1 Umezawa's Jitte 4 Green Sun's Zenith	1 Dryad Arbor 1 Forest 1 Bayou 3 Grove of the Burnwillows 1 Horizon Canopy 1 Plateau 2 Savannah 2 Taiga 1 Thespian's Stage 3 Wasteland 4 Windswept Heath 3 Wooded Foothills 1 Karakas 1 Dark Depths	1 Null Rod 1 Pithing Needle 1 Tormod's Crypt 1 Ethersworn Canonist 1 Phyrexian Revoker 1 Reclamation Sage 2 Choke 2 Engineered Plague 1 Oblivion Ring 2 Enlightened Tutor 1 Gaddock Teeg 1 Bojuka Bog

Or a non-punishing variety:

Maverick; Noel Thompson

Spells (24+13=37)	Lands (23)	Sideboard (15)
1 Birds of Paradise 4 Deathrite Shaman 4 Knight of the Reliquary 4 Mother of Runes 2 Qasali Pridemage 1 Scavenging Ooze 1 Scryb Ranger 3 Stoneforge Mystic 1 Gaddock Teeg 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 1 Batterskull 1 Sylvan Library 3 Abrupt Decay 3 Swords to Plowshares 1 Umezawa's Jitte 4 Green Sun's Zenith	1 Dryad Arbor 1 Forest 1 Plains 2 Bayou 4 Savannah 2 Scrubland 1 Tower of the Magistrate 4 Verdant Catacombs 3 Wasteland 3 Windswept Heath 1 Karakas	1 Scavenging Ooze 2 Engineered Plague 1 Crop Rotation 1 Krosan Grip 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Gaddock Teeg 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 1 Life from the Loam 4 Thoughtseize 1 Toxic Deluge 1 Bojuka Bog

Again those list are incredibly tight. If you remove too many creatures, you may have too little for survival to work efficiently, if you remove removal spells, you lose in flexibility and the ability to answer troublesome permanents. And it's not even only that, but if you for example remove Mom, your beatdown plan is considerably worse and more subsceptible to removal, even if you gain the ability to go off with Vengevines etc...

-snip-

To get more in the specifics with your post:

I said why those cards would NOT be played alongisde Survival. If you want to tell me that Delver, Pyromancer, or TNN would be played alongisde survival, then i think you're off a bit. I explained why in my previous post that you evidently skipped:

I did not skip it; I think it's inadequate. GW Survival pilots know how desasterous efficient it was to drop several Tarmogoyfs/KotRs if the graveyard was shut down and we know that SFM and TNN outclassed them by today. It's not off to think that these might replace the graveyard-dependant heavy-hitters of old.

So i can safely say that your calling "bullshit" should be a bit more argumented because to me, all those points about those creatures i presented seems pretty strong. Or if you want to show me a Pyro, TNN, Delver Survival list, then go on, i'd be honestly impressed if you managed to get a good list because the conflict between what those cards want and what survival want seems insurmountable to me to be honest.

I don't see a conflict with Survival if you improve the beatz-aspect the deck ever had as a plan B, to not rely on the graveyard like Goofy & KotR did. You are totally free to toy with a BANT shell aka SFM+Hierarch+TNN+Retainer+GSZ+, a BUG shell aka DRS+Vengevine+TNN or a GW shell with SFM+Hierarch+Retainer+hatebears. We can assume that the 2010 Survival lists ARE outdated and don't give an image of the true potential.

So you can see i never ignored this possibility. In fact, it was the whole point of my post: Survival is getting relatively worse because there are more creatures worse with SotF getting printed, than creatures good in Survival decks. This has been the case for the largest part of Legacy history before the printing of vengevines, another point that you seems to have skipped, cue RecSur, Tradewind Survival, and Tool and Tubbies decks which were faded out by Blue tempo variants and other combo decks, until VV got printed at least.

I don't know why you think creature power creep makes creature tutors worse. Really, no clue.

Again, this is not what i said at all. What i've said is that the plan of returning vengevines isn't as good as before because of the new factors existing that weaken the vengevine beatdown plan. This is a matter of opportunity cost, if your combo plan isn't as autowin as it used to be, the trade for losing consistency, options and redundancy get worse. And in turn this make survival as a card worse. For example, Delver burn decks are now often faster than straight Vengevine beatdown which win around T4.

And that's why I think, we should take a honest look on Survivals potential rather than clinging to Vengevine.

I also never dodged the fact that survival was also an aggro deck, i simply posited that that "plan B" by today standards is much worse than it was because (a) decks now have new, extremely efficient threats that don't fit in survival decks, and (b) that survival decks, by concession of fitting a consistent engine in them, have already a worse aggro plan compared to conventional Green based aggro decks like maverick. Your "excellent" plan B, is not "excellent" anymore by modern standards, it's simply a plan B. Probably around Elves! beatdown plan.

There is no proof formthe bolded part. I don't see a reason Survival can't adopt these threats.

I make a break here as some topics repeat

[rlesko]

No doubt. TC didn't help the situation. Delver doesn't help the situation. Ponder doesn't help. TNN doesn't help either.

But there is one card that makes all of this work. Have force in a match up that doesn't need it? Have 2 TCs early in the game and need some gas? Want to fill up your GY fast and fix that land flood in your hand? Want to run 16 lands in a non-combo deck? Got some bad luck an drew your batterskull?

Focusing on the 4th or 5th best card in a subsection of these decks (delver/TC) as the problem is disingenuous.

Yes brainstorm is a very powerful card. Its probably the best card in legacy, I'm not arguing that.

I'm not trying to focus on any particular card. Just getting in on this thread and wanting to make it clear that in every deck except certain miracles builds, it was never correct to run a maindeck Pyroblast before the printing of Treasure Cruise. What I see is

Pre Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast side

Post Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast main

yes/no?

[Dice_Box]

I would like to just point out that Painter too also happens to have 6 to 8 REB's it its 75. Just to correct everyone that is saying that Miracles was the only deck doing it.

[rlesko]

I would like to just point out that Painter too also happens to have 6 to 8 REB's it its 75. Just to correct everyone that is saying that Miracles was the only deck doing it.

Yes but they also run Painter's Servant. Comparing this to say miracles running main deck Pyro is apples to oranges.

[iGrok]

I would like to just point out that Painter too also happens to have 6 to 8 REB's it its 75. Just to correct everyone that is saying that Miracles was the only deck doing it.

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Painter ran them for quite different reasons than anyone else, so perhaps that is why people aren't mentioning it.

[FoolofaTook]

Yes brainstorm is a very powerful card. Its probably the best card in legacy, I'm not arguing that.

I'm not trying to focus on any particular card. Just getting in on this thread and wanting to make it clear that in every deck except certain miracles builds, it was never correct to run a maindeck Pyroblast before the printing of Treasure Cruise. What I see is

Pre Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast side

Post Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast main

yes/no?

Pyroblasts/REB's main is a result of blue going well over critical mass in the meta after Treasure Cruise was printed. It's not specifically for Treasure Cruise it's for the mass of blue cards that will kill you now, particularly near the end of a long tournament. It's no accident that 4 or the 5 blue shells in the top 8 main listed Pyroblast.

The blue killers at the moment:

Delver of Secrets
Treasure Cruise
Brainstorm (to put a Miracle back on top of the pile)
True-Name Nemesis
Force of Will

That's why people were main-listing Pyroblasts. Most of the lists in top 32 were going to feature several of those threats and an answer for was very valuable.

[Megadeus]

Isn't Thragtusk considered a mistake by Wizards? The printing of Lifebane Zombie is a direct result of them fucking up.

Tusk was actually one of their fixer cards. They printed it in response to the Geist/Snap caster/Delver tempo decks that were successful thanks to vapor snag. Hence the leaves, not dies clause on its second ability

[Dice_Box]

Yes but they also run Painter's Servant. Comparing this to say miracles running main deck Pyro is apples to oranges.

I disagree. There is a reason that you can run 6 Blasts main is that they are often not dead draws without Painter.

It is a deck with only Top as a way to filter draws that otherwise chooses to run 6 dead draws without a combo piece on the table? That does not seam like smart deck-building unless there is more to it than that. Painter as a deck exists only on the back of decks like Delver being strong in the environment. I think it proves a very strong point and one that should not be overlooked or discarded when you start talking about things like this.

We have a deck that before TC could win events with 6 cards that, should should you go up against a non Blue deck with any creature removal, are totally dead. But with it you can win events. That says something. It says a lot.

[Gheizen64]

You ignore that GSZ can only fetch green creatures while Survival can get you any. That's why I suggested running both alongside in the other thread for a certain redundancy. A peoblem I had with your list in the other thread was, that it was full of crappy 1-offs and three angles of attack based in the graveyard. I'm convinced that you can reduce the situational cards to a minimum. For example: Retainer + Griselbrand are two cards while Vengevines, Rootwalla and Memnite take up to 6. There is a lot of space for design. Who knows, maybe Squee + TNN can do the trick as well without having to run 4 mana 4/3 beaters?

Redundancy come at the expense of playing actual cards. If you run both GSZ and survival, plus lots of creatures, suddendly you have very little space in your deck. You propose retainer + Griselbrand as the only concessions, but Griselbrand isn't that good in a deck with little spells and many creatures, and viceversa for survival. Emrakul is a better choice, even if it's a bit clunkier because you leave yourself open to Swords. And then why wouldn't you just play recurring nightmare with a singleton Entomb? Squee + TNN is cute but again, it's an extremely slow and roundabout way to gain card advantage, which could've been good in 2005 maybe. Survival was available FOR YEARS before VV was printed, and no deck using it and any reanimating tricks, or card advantage engine using squee were ever really top decks aside for maybe the very beginning of the format. The reasons for this are the inherently slowness of the card as a card-advantage engine when combined with things with squee, and the design constraints it put on your deck + slowness as a card filtering/tutoring engine.

Have you considered that this is not the case? Maybe a steady stream of creatures (like DRS+SFM+Thalia+MoR+Reclamation Sage?) is enough? This would require testing.

Again, if your deck is so redundant, why play survival at all? Decks of old almost never played survival for a reason: they wanted to play few, efficients threats, and protect them to victory. Survival is an unnecessary step. A slow, steady stream of creatures, with little way to get carda advantage sounds like a good plan to lose against all but maybe midrange decks.

Look back at what Survival did to zoo and goblins! The deck pushed both out of the format, because of the aggro-combo it was able to execute. Try to leave the idea behind that survival takes up a guaranteed dozen of spots.

If you don't take the survival combo with survival, survival is the card that was before VV was printed, a T2 strategies enabler. The demise of Goblins and Zoo has been attributed to so many different factors and i'll take that as a joke, since they're still nowhere to be seen (unless you consider UR delver basically a Zoo). And goblin has been a viable deck for years while survival was in the format, so if anything there are more indications of goblin being good when survival is legal than when it is banned.

It offer the potential as an engine, but you can still use it to convert your Dryad Arbors you draw into rock-hard beatz. Your example of removing card from a graveyard with Survival costs exactly 1 green mana because Fairy Maccabre is a card. It's in fact cheaper than GSZ for Ooze. Just saying.

Again, you think the card as a tutor is efficient, but you're paying 1GG to cycle 1 creature. I don't see that as efficient at all, especially if you just cycle for a "rock-hard" beat, which basically mean you're going at it like the slowest midrange aggro deck ever. Also, Fairy Macabre is a card, but one that has an opportunity cost because it does nothing but exiling cards, which is why i didn't even consider it as i wanted to play as less dead cards as possible.

The topic repeats. Get Walla, Memnite and shit out of your head. Dropping TNNs every fucking turn because you convert your Arbors & DRS' gets easily out of hand. I consider GSZ, Arbor and SotF an excellent combination, as you can tell.

"Shit" was what pushed Survival to being too good for this format. Not Goyf, nor Emrakul, (which was printed in the same set as VV), nor Iona, nor KotR. It was Vengevine, that and only that, because of the ability to cheat for mana costs. Just tutoring, at card parity, for G, was nowhere as good enough for the format, nor is good enough now if you don't include the cheating aspect of the card.

If you cut the P.Fire engine and some manadorks (because the list below doesn't even run Arbor) you can fit in Survival and stuff. You still have SFM, KotR and Vengevines for the aggro plan if we take the list below as a base, which I don't recommend, because I don't neccessarily see the need of MoR if you gain additional redundancy via survival

And i agree here, but i've noticed that you have little to no way to gain card advantage if Survival/Vengevines get negated, which is why Mom was a good card here, providing tons of virtual CA.

I did not skip it; I think it's inadequate. GW Survival pilots know how desasterous efficient it was to drop several Tarmogoyfs/KotRs if the graveyard was shut down and we know that SFM and TNN outclassed them by today. It's not off to think that these might replace the graveyard-dependant heavy-hitters of old.

I don't see a conflict with Survival if you improve the beatz-aspect the deck ever had as a plan B, to not rely on the graveyard like Goofy & KotR did. You are totally free to toy with a BANT shell aka SFM+Hierarch+TNN+Retainer+GSZ+, a BUG shell aka DRS+Vengevine+TNN or a GW shell with SFM+Hierarch+Retainer+hatebears. We can assume that the 2010 Survival lists ARE outdated and don't give an image of the true potential.

Ok so you think Survival as a sort of library/top to clear the chaff of your topdeck and always get a relevant beater is good, but there are tons of cards that do this and don't require you to play as many creatures, or the green color, at all. The fact survival do this in green should be a plus, not a cons. Goyf and KotR were green and not as mana intensive as TNN is. Again you're ignoring the cost of running such mana intensive engines and cards, when the end result is a 3/1 on the board. There's a reason even TNN as good as it is it's not played as a 4-of, and there's also a reason for Goyf playing a lot less play right now: you can't afford to clog your hand and do nothing early turns when people play 3/2 flying for U and infinite tokens with YP, or SnT emrakuls T3.

I don't know why you think creature power creep makes creature tutors worse. Really, no clue.

Because that's exactly what happened for years before VV got printed. History taught me that Survival was good in decks that abused the graveyard interaction, and nowhere as good in other decks. TnT, RecSur, Angry Tradewind Survival were all based on grave interactions: TnT had welder+squee, RecSur had Recurring Nightmare, and ATS had squee, genesys and E. Witness.

And that's why I think, we should take a honest look on Survivals potential rather than clinging to Vengevine.

Again, survival was a non-card for YEARS, until Vengevine got printed. And power creep has always been there, but never did anything but push Survival more and more out of the metagame until Vengevine got printed and gave him a second life as a combo finisher.

There is no proof form the bolded part. I don't see a reason Survival can't adopt these threats.

So you think that survival decks can play TNN, Delvers, Pyromancers? Thalias? You aren't feeling already the clunkyness of those hands, of all that non-green mana you need to play TNNs? Of the fact that without getting card advantage from your survival, your opponent can jsut 1for1 you all day long adn then play TC or DTT, or just miracle out your board? Or the fact that survival isn't giving you anything in the first turns of the game because you'll want to already play the threats you have in hand, and not search for a combo to give you insane virtual card advatnage with it ? I feel the clunkyness of those hands and those survival as it was yesterday, playing TnT decks that were still sorta good by those days standards.

Threats aside, what about Treasure cruise? Or containment priest? You're just being dishonest if you really think that better creatures being printed just make survival better ignoring :
- the history of the game that point out the opposite with the only exception of Vengevine, and squee before that
- the context in which those better creatures operate at their best which is more often something that's not survival rather than survival decks because of their colors, mana cost, overall strategy they fit within

[testing32]

I disagree. There is a reason that you can run 6 Blasts main is that they are often not dead draws without Painter.

It is a deck with only Top as a way to filter draws that otherwise chooses to run 6 dead draws without a combo piece on the table? That does not seam like smart deck-building unless there is more to it than that. Painter as a deck exists only on the back of decks like Delver being strong in the environment. I think it proves a very strong point and one that should not be overlooked or discarded when you start talking about things like this.

We have a deck that before TC could win events with 6 cards that, should should you go up against a non Blue deck with any creature removal, are totally dead. But with it you can win events. That says something. It says a lot.

You have a point. There is a reason that it's not blue based and running hydroblasts.

[rlesko]

You have a point. There is a reason that it's not blue based and running hydroblasts.

Ya, because Imperial Recruiter, Goblin Welder, Blood Moon, Simian Spirit Guide, Magus of the Moon, and Lightning Bolt aren't blue...

[Dice_Box]

No, but Brainstorm, Force, Transmute Artifact, Tezzeret, Academy Ruins and Intuition are.

If Hyroblast was as good in this format as REB was, Painter would be just as fitting as a Blue deck.

[rlesko]

No, but Brainstorm, Force, Transmute Artifact, Tezzeret, Academy Ruins and Intuition are.

If Hyroblast was as good in this format as REB was, Painter would be just as fitting as a Blue deck.

Do note I agree that REB/Pyro is far better in the format than BEB/Hydro. It would be foolish to argue that.

Hey, that deck doesn't sound half bad...

[gainsay]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC. WotC is pushing for everything being creature-centric, and as a result, push creature power creep on blue. That just gave legacy's best color a way of being better that it didn't need. Wizards needs to address powercreep and creature-centrism. I enjoy legacy mainly because there's competitive styles you're allowed to play that aren't just turning creatures right

[FoolofaTook]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC. WotC is pushing for everything being creature-centric, and as a result, push creature power creep on blue. That just gave legacy's best color a way of being better that it didn't need. Wizards needs to address powercreep and creature-centrism. I enjoy legacy mainly because there's competitive styles you're allowed to play that aren't just turning creatures right

You do have a point here. Traditionally creatures have been weak due to summoning sickness and the opponent's ability to interact with them in additional ways before they do damage.

Insectile Aberration is often a good-sized evasive beater before the opponent can setup to interact with it effectively. True-Name Nemesis is a largely non-interactive creature that is problematic for many lists to deal with once it lands. It does seem as though WotC has made a point of emphasis on giving blue creatures that are hard to interact with effectively when they are backed up by the blue shell.

Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf were also in this class prior to the blue additions. Mishra's Factory was sometimes in this class depending on how the blue shell was configured.

The blue shell is the problem though. It is what makes the creatures hard to interact with effectively.

[CabalTherapy]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC.

Tell me, where does Delver constantly win everything?
Delver decks shouldn't be even in the top5 "Legacy's best strategies" because playing a cc1 1/1 which flips into a mighty 3/2 flying is a joke.
People should rearrange their minds and play real decks that demand brainpower or are simply more powerful and evil.
I consider Storm, Miracles, Reanimator, UW Blade or even Deathblade and SneakShow stronger than Delverdeck.