Treasure Cruise has had a giant impact on Legacy. Completely changing key cards in decks to make them more cruise friendly. I rode the wave for a couple of weeks and drank deeply of that Kool-Aid. Treasure Cruise is pretty amazing. In a world where everyone is drawing three like it’s 1993 all over again, how do you fight on the next level?
Recently, Tim showed us the new meta in a post cruise world. Pretty enlightening stuff. UR is playing Swiftspear and getting super aggressive (This was my plan a few weeks ago), Temur is playing Pyromancer and removing Nimble Mongoose to enable their greedy graveyard and several other decks are playing the draw 3 just to kept up with what everyone else is doing.
Let’s assume that most Delver Decks are cutting counter magic for more burn and proactive spells to power Swiftspear and get to Delve mana quicker. Less Counter magic and more Graveyard reliance…
Oh crap Combo is set up to be quite good again. If you don’t have a terminal velocity of counter magic, then combo is likely to cast Duress or Thoughtseize or Silence and find you naked, with a couple of Chain Lightning and a forked bolt in your hand. Then it’s off to Show and Tell or Ad Nasuem or Whatever the kids are doing these days. I say all that to say this: Combo Just got better.
Graveyards are a thing too, and let’s be honest Combo decks tend to like their graveyards as well. So it follows that if Combo gets stronger and graveyard is a very important part of Delver decks. Then Rest in Peace gets important. This allows Miracles to go all in on RIP combo and play the Energy Field/ Helm List. Also Death and Taxes sure doesn’t mind playing RIP… AND Spirit of the Labyrinth doesn’t care much about Treasure cruise.
So here’s the thing Treasure Cruise > Aggressive Delver > Combo > RIP > DnT and Miracles.
What the hell would I play?
Well I like Treasure cruise a lot. Enough to play it in a delver shell. But I’m a patient man. I like Temur delver. It plays more counter Magic than the other decks and doesn’t get all crazing maxing out on Cruise. It gets bricked a little by RIP but with Pyromancer in over Mongoose thats not as bing a deal. My board will have 2 Helm of Obedience, though. as I’m expecting to see RIP in a non 0 number of matches. I’ll be making room in the list someplace for 4 Dazes 2 Spell Pierce and 2 Snare along with the Stifles and Forces.
Ideally, I’d pick a Show and Tell deck. They are more resilient to the hate, and don’t really need to play Cruise to make their deck work better. With Counterspells on the down spiral it seems like a good time to bring Emrakal or Griselbrand to class.
The hope is that I didn’t go too far down the rabbit hole here. But Eternal Weekend is a place to do just that. Hopefully, I’ll see you down there.