At this point I think most of you, my dear readers, are aware that I love drawing cards a lot. A whole lot, in fact. Something you might be a little less
aware of is that I also enjoy testing the limits of what we can get away with. There is just so much to learn – and such potential to hit something truly
absurd – when you’re going beyond what looks feasible on first sight. The deck I have for you today is the result of such an exploration.
Before we get started, this isn’t a finished list. I’m still wavering on some numbers, I’m still not convinced the win condition I’m using at this point is
actually the right one, and I’m quite sure the sideboard needs a bit of work. I’m also still making quite a few mistakes with the deck. Yet the list has
felt incredibly potent in the local events. I’m seriously considering playing it instead of Storm, even in important events in the near future; that should
tell those of you that are following my stuff regularly something about the potential I’m seeing.
Here’s the deck I affectionately call Golddigger:
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (20)
Spells (36)
Note: Please ignore the 61 cards. I’m simply not sure what to cut yet without disrupting the ratios. I don’t think it can be the Preordain as you usually
want as many early cantrips as possible to smooth out your mana situation while filling the yard, but maybe I just love the Cantrip Cartel too much.
The Fundamentals
Golddigger came about from me asking myself the simple question: “How many of the delve draw spells can a deck actually support without going out of its
way playing bad cards such as Mental Note.” I mean, think about it. At this point more and more players accept that you should just be jamming the full set
of Treasure Cruises in those decks that can reasonably support them. In testing Cruise Delver lists, Treasure Cruise is also the card I’m consistently
praying to draw from turn 3 onwards if I don’t have one yet, and I don’t seem to be the only one. As a result, I would at least consider playing five or
six copies in a spell-heavy cantrip deck.
So given how close Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are in power level, then, why do we limit ourselves to just a playset? I mean, maybe four Cruise is
exactly the number we want. However, maybe we should want five Treasure Cruise. Maybe we want six. Dig Through Time would allow us to do just that.
At that point though, we have a deck that spends a lot of room on card drawing spells and cheap spells that rapidly fill the graveyard (aka not
permanents). That means it might be tough to find room for both interaction and the threats necessary to support a Delver aggro-control strategy. Well, if
I have to choose between creatures and playing a ton of countermagic and removal, I know which side I end up on. Having all those spells also
means your graveyard should be filling up quite rapidly indeed.
Once we’re playing a control game though, I still feel what I mentioned in my original article pushing these
cards: Dig Through Time is actually quite a bit more powerful than Treasure Cruise if you can afford the UU and value the instant speed. So at that point,
Treasure Cruise should be playing Dig Through Time number five+ instead of things being the other way around.
These considerations complete, I set out to build a very rough list, and I rapidly learned two things. First, the deck was easily able to fire of a delve
draw spell roughly every two turns starting on turn 4. Second, Dig Through Time is nuts. If you think resolving Treasure Cruise is a blast, wait
until you’ve started casting Dig.
It’s pretty. Real pretty.
Dig’s slightly lighter delve requirements (to reach maximum power level) and instant speed also helped consistently fuel further delving, leading to me
often Digging into another Dig Through Time when the opportunity presented itself.
The result is a deck that plays essentially the same game as the (very) old school Fact or Fiction Keeper lists from Vintage ca. 2000. You spend your hand
countering and casting spot-removal, refueling with a broken draw spell, and just keep doing that until the opponent runs out, at which point you could win
with pretty much anything but really want to win with something resilient that can play offense as well as defense.
It’s been tough getting used to this playstyle again, as the tools for doing so have been absent from the formats I play for such a long time. In Vintage,
we learned how to just go combo control at some point, and control into draw into more control into win eventually fell by the wayside.
Legacy on the other hand simply hasn’t ever had the draw engines necessary to make this kind of strategy truly viable. Please don’t talk about Standstill.
Card drawing you can only cast when you’ve already stabilized does not count. Having to relearn to do something you could do essentially by instinct more
than a decade ago sure does feel weird.
The Specifics
Now that you know how that many delve spells ended up in the same 60 (fine, fine 61. Stickler.), let’s break down how and why each of the functional
subgroups looks the way it does. Let’s start with the obvious core of the deck,
The Draw Engine
4 Ponder
Brainstorm is a no-brainer in just about any blue deck and I wanted a lot of cantrips to help fill up the graveyard fast while being able to play a low
land-count and finding the correct answers at the right time. I originally started with even more Preordains, but they’ve slowly gotten whittled down to
the sole survivor you see in the decklist. I’d really love to get at least the second one back in, but so far I just can’t find the room (remember that I
also need to still cut down to sixty first).
The six delve spells are the result of basically always wanting to draw at least one but also not wanting to flood too heavily on them early in the game or
in the midgame after you’ve already eaten your graveyard once or twice. So far I’ve been happy with six of them, but I could see wanting the seventh if it
turns out I can actually support it. The reasons for the 4-2 split in favor of Dig should be obvious from what I explained above.
The Removal Package
1 Fire//Ice
I originally started from a purely U/R shell that simply used eight Lightning Bolts and Forked Bolts as its removal suite. In testing, I realized that it
was quite annoying to have no answers to larger creatures like Tarmogoyf and even missing out on killing Monastery Swiftspear due to them casting Daze,
Brainstorm, or Lightning Bolt. In short, I really wanted the gold standard removal spell that is Swords to Plowshares as the deck wasn’t clocking them
anyway.
At that point, the deck also had Engineered Explosives and Academy Ruins in its sideboard as a way to fight through Counterbalance in the long game. Then,
when I played against Elves, I realized that there was a real chance of running out of removal in the deck if all you did was trade one for one.
Glancing at my sideboard, I realized that Engineered Explosives in the maindeck would solve that issue while also giving me a maindeck out to the
Counterbalance lock and hard to deal with threats, such as True-Name Nemesis, Liliana of the Veil, or holdover Nimble Mongooses. I made the switch and have
been very happy with it so far.
The Fire//Ice is the latest thing I’ve been trying in the fifth early game removal slot. I had Lightning Bolt there, I’ve tried maindeck Pyroclasm, and
I’ve considered a maindeck Path to Exile. None of them have been awesome, but I really think you want a fifth early game 1 for one spell to shoot Deathrite
Shamans, Delver of Secrets, Young Pyromancers, and Stoneforge Mystics, so that’s why it’s here. I might be overly paranoid so maybe that’s where I should
cut down to sixty.
The Finishers
In spite of how many cards the deck can draw already, Jace is still the best control finisher in the format considering flexibility and power level. Jace
and Entreat the Angels – which would probably need Sensei’s Divining Top to support it – are still the closest things to a one card combo we have access to
in Legacy so not playing either just isn’t reasonable. I would have loved to just make that my win condition like I have in the past, but once you do that
you get into a lot of trouble with your worst opponent: the clock. Finishing a three-game match in time becomes almost impossible to do if your only way to
win is by ultimating Jace, and basically being guaranteed a draw if you lose one of the first two games in a round isn’t a prospect I relish. So the deck
needs something that can clock reasonably fast to complement its Jaces.
That creature slot started out as Young Pyromancer, serving as a Vintage style win condition that could rapidly grow out of control later in the game with
cantrips and delve spells. Its defensive capabilities were sorely lacking though, and making enough tokens to be worth it in response to a mostly assured
removal spell hitting it – it’s not like the deck can get rid of the opponent’s dead removal – required more commitment than I liked. What I really wanted
was something akin to Vintage’s Tinker for Blightsteel Colossus, but (luckily) they don’t let us do that in Legacy.
Stoneforge Mystic for Batterskull plays sufficiently close to that to rouse my attention though. I usually hate the squire that could, but here it fills a
lot of valuable roles. It produces an early threat that pretty much needs an answer – and thereby allows you to profit from you heavy pitch-counter suite –
it finds you a replacement card to Brainstorm away early and hardcast late, and the Batterskull itself gives you a much appreciated ability to somehow gain
life (being at one is really annoying between Force of Will and the fetchlands). If someone knows a better way to close out the game, I’m all ears. Until
then I can only say I’ve been decently happy with the Kor Artificer.
The Countersuite
Here, we have a setup that also probably raised some eyebrows:
Two copies of Misdirection? Two maindeck Pyroblast? Well, the Blasts are easy to explain. I suspect the majority of my opponents by now to either be
playing combo, Miracles, or having gotten the delve memo. In either case, having maindeck Pyroblasts is very powerful, and you want four one mana ways to
interact on the stack. Spell Pierce complements these because Sneak Attack, Hymn to Tourach, and Natural Order are, in fact, not blue cards.
The two copies of Misdirections, on the other hand, are a direct result of the heavy delve package. With drawing so many cards, I really wanted additional
Force of Wills to win counter wars, and Misdirection is the closest to that they let me play with. It really is as simple as that. Pitch counters also have
the advantage of allowing you to cast more spells on low mana counts, helping you fill the graveyard for your next delve spell. Between these
considerations and the occasional blowout (Hymn to Tourach, Misdirecting their countermagic onto their own spells when you Dig in response to something)
I’ve been quite happy with them indeed.
As to Counterspell, I started with the full playset and have been forced to grudgingly shave one at this point. When your plan is to cast one for one
answers, refuel, rinse, and repeat, you need a critical mass of flexible all purpose answers in your deck, and Counterspell fills that role superbly. I
wouldn’t suggest further lowering that number simply because you might run out of copies in your deck before your opponents run out of threats.
The Manabase
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
3 Tundra
The manabase is pretty straightforward. You run a low land count so you want access to enough basics to power the deck on their own while aiming to play
the first couple of turns of the game immune to Wasteland similar to how Miracles does things. In addition, you want as many fetchlands as you can make
room for to help fuel the delve spells. It might be correct to cut the third Tundra for another fetchland, in fact. For the time being I have one more
Tundra than Volcanic Island because Tundra is what casts your early game removal spell while allowing you to hit UU for Dig Through Time as early as
possible.
That leaves just the Academy Ruins. I originally ran the deck with nineteen land and it was doing fine. However, when I moved the Engineered Explosives
removal plus inevitability engine from the sideboard to the maindeck, I couldn’t imagine cutting down on blue sources to do so, and I also didn’t want to
give up access to both non-blue basic lands in the deck with maindeck Pyroblasts. An additional land was the only way to get it in. I’ve been happy with
that solution so far as the deck is actually quite mana hungry to begin with.
The Sideboard
Given that I start out deckbuilding by trying to get my maindeck correct, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the sideboard is very much a work in progress.
I’m reasonably sure I want Vendilion Cliques and Flusterstorms against combo. as you need a lot of instant speed interaction to actually deal with them if
that’s your only angle of attack. Clique also happens to be just awesome in control mirrors between threatening planeswalkers and giving you the ability to
open up windows for timing attacks with Jace.
The duo of additional Blasts is also something I feel every deck that can reasonably support it wants. Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast are so good right
now that it seems foolhardy to run less. They can end up having somewhat diminishing returns, which is why I’ve stopped at four copies overall. I’m not
sure if splitting the sideboard copies is even right as it mainly hedges against Meddling Mage and Surgical Extraction type effects, and Pyroblast has the
huge upside of allowing you to discard it for a single red mana to serve as a Lotus Petal for the follow up delve spell (which is why all the maindeck
copies are Pyroblast).
The two sets of sweepers – Pyroclasm and Supreme Verdict – are here to fight Elves and Young Pyromancer, but additional applications should be quite
obvious. I’m running a split because I love Clasm’s mana efficiency, but I also want some ways to deal with a Progenitus or to complement the Explosives as
answers to True-Name Nemesis and Geist of Saint Traft. Having a full four of these plus all those Explosives might be a bit of overkill, so I’ll be
experimenting with trimming from these in the future.
The singleton Grafdigger’s Cage is where some of those slots might go. Having only a single piece of graveyard hate is almost as bad as completely skimping
against Dredge, and I’m reasonably sure I’ll want an additional one or two pieces to support it in the future. I’m just waiting to figure out what I’m most
comfortable living without.
The singleton Hydroblast on the other hand I’ve been quite happy with. It has a surprising number of high priority targets at the moment – from Sneak
Attack and Past in Flames to Sulfuric Vortex and the best creatures in U/R Delver – and is extremely cheap to boot. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up
making room for another copy at some point or at least in some metagames.
All of that being said, there are a lot of other things that need to be explored with the deck. Dig Through Time makes running specialized high impact
cards very powerful because it allows you to dig so deep to find them. Blood Moon, Moat, Humility, Ethersworn Canonist, Back to Basics, and the whole host
of single cards that can ruin complete strategies all deserve consideration for sideboard inclusion at the very least. So do a small number of widely
flexible answers along the lines of Council’s Judgment, Disenchant, Wear//Tear and their ilk.
The Beauty of Drawing a Million Cards
I don’t think what we’ve done so far with Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time is even scratching the surface. Having affordable, powerful burst card
advantage available in the format changes a whole lot of dynamics we Legacy veterans have become very much accustomed to, and TreasureBlade is my latest
effort of coming to grips with what beautiful things I can now do that I couldn’t ever do before. I can’t claim that this is the best deck in the format
(yet?), but what I can guarantee is that if you enjoy the feel of playing old school control, you should give this deck a try. It’s a beautiful feeling to
constantly shovel cards from your library into your hand, and the power level of Dig Through Time is just through the roof in a control strategy.
I would even go so far as to claim that the deck is a powerful choice for the Legacy GP only a month away if you manage to get the last kinks out of the
deck and learn to play it at lightning speed. A lot of the games I’ve lost haven’t come from the deck being unable to win the game but from me making
mistakes because I have to rush through every decision. The games this deck plays are long and grindy, and the round clock feels like an even worse enemy
than it does when I’m playing Miracles. At least that deck can make a bunch of Angels to end the game in short order!
If you enjoy drawing cards and countering spells, give my Golddigger a try. It’s as much fun as a control mage can have in Legacy right now. If you have
questions or suggestions, let me know. All kinds of (constructive) feedback are appreciated!