Treasure Cruise

[vaughnbros]

Horray, it's the old "this card is unplayable – restrict it!" reflex again! How I missed you.
It was so funny to watch the same thing going on with jace. Where's jace, by the way?

I can't find a single post in this thread saying this card is explicitly unplayable, only comments that dig is probably the better card (which may actually be true for a majority of vintage decks).  

I agree with you though that the restrict it comments are way way too early.  Vintage has proved adaptable to many powerful cards.  Lets let the dust settle before restricting anything.

Rest assured, people will figure out how to hate on UR delvers, Treasure Cruise, etc. But I think you have to accept it as a new force by now. (Even if treasure cruise would be restricted: 1 cruise, 1 dig, 2 other slots. No big deal.)

So, what is the big secret to beating it then? How do you "figure out a way" to beat the deck that has the best draw engine the most efficient threats, and an endless supply of answers?

The card has been out for barely a month now, and delver has been played in a disproportionately high amount during that time period.  If the field is 40% delver, which may not actually be a stretch, seeing half of a top 8 on delver isn't really that big of a deal.  As for how to beat it, I went 2-2, 5-4 in games, against delver at worlds without even running a single card devoted to it with a deck that isn't even supposed to have a good aggro match up...

[diophan]

Do they release a metagame breakdown for champs? The UR delver lists eat up most decks that aren't shops or oath, but I really feel that you need a green splash to make those matchups reasonable. I played shops 3 times in the trial and 0 times at champs. I never played against oath until the semis. I played the 2-4 color delver mirror in 6 of my matches on Sunday, right from the beginning, so I wouldn't be surprised if delver was not too far from half the field.

Anyway, my point is that the two decks that punish 2 color delver are certainly on the expensive side and were likely unrepresented at a non-proxy event.

[Protoaddict]

Rest assured, people will figure out how to hate on UR delvers, Treasure Cruise, etc. But I think you have to accept it as a new force by now. (Even if treasure cruise would be restricted: 1 cruise, 1 dig, 2 other slots. No big deal.)

So, what is the big secret to beating it then? How do you "figure out a way" to beat the deck that has the best draw engine the most efficient threats, and an endless supply of answers?

Volcanic fallout. I have not seen anyone play it yet because people are so slow to adapt but it wipes the board 99% of the time and is immune to every counter they have. It wont win you the game but it will reset them to the point that they NEED to play TC just to stay in the game.

The challenge it to find a home for fallout now, but it is a strong card against dredge and humans as well so maybe people can figure it out.

[Smmenen]

Rest assured, people will figure out how to hate on UR delvers, Treasure Cruise, etc. But I think you have to accept it as a new force by now. (Even if treasure cruise would be restricted: 1 cruise, 1 dig, 2 other slots. No big deal.)

So, what is the big secret to beating it then? How do you "figure out a way" to beat the deck that has the best draw engine the most efficient threats, and an endless supply of answers?

Volcanic fallout. I have not seen anyone play it yet because people are so slow to adapt but it wipes the board 99% of the time and is immune to every counter they have. It wont win you the game but it will reset them to the point that they NEED to play TC just to stay in the game.

The challenge it to find a home for fallout now, but it is a strong card against dredge and humans as well so maybe people can figure it out.

Delver pilots in local Northeastern tournaments should run a maindeck Null Rod to combat EE, and Trygons to survive VF.  Trygon is my favorite creature in Delver right now. 

[enderfall]

Rest assured, people will figure out how to hate on UR delvers, Treasure Cruise, etc. But I think you have to accept it as a new force by now. (Even if treasure cruise would be restricted: 1 cruise, 1 dig, 2 other slots. No big deal.)

So, what is the big secret to beating it then? How do you "figure out a way" to beat the deck that has the best draw engine the most efficient threats, and an endless supply of answers?

Volcanic fallout. I have not seen anyone play it yet because people are so slow to adapt but it wipes the board 99% of the time and is immune to every counter they have. It wont win you the game but it will reset them to the point that they NEED to play TC just to stay in the game.

The challenge it to find a home for fallout now, but it is a strong card against dredge and humans as well so maybe people can figure it out.

So, how many VF do you put in the board? Mystical for VF isn't reliable, nor is Vamp, due to them seemingly always having a Misstep (or 2).

[JarofFortune]

Rest assured, people will figure out how to hate on UR delvers, Treasure Cruise, etc. But I think you have to accept it as a new force by now. (Even if treasure cruise would be restricted: 1 cruise, 1 dig, 2 other slots. No big deal.)

So, what is the big secret to beating it then? How do you "figure out a way" to beat the deck that has the best draw engine the most efficient threats, and an endless supply of answers?

Volcanic fallout. I have not seen anyone play it yet because people are so slow to adapt but it wipes the board 99% of the time and is immune to every counter they have. It wont win you the game but it will reset them to the point that they NEED to play TC just to stay in the game.

The challenge it to find a home for fallout now, but it is a strong card against dredge and humans as well so maybe people can figure it out.

Alternatively, prevent them from interacting with you. It doesn't matter how many counters they have when you have Cavern of Souls. If Control Oath ran 2 cavern between the main and side, it would increase their Delver matchup winrate drastically. Then there are other cards like Night of Soul's betrayal, Chains of mephistopheles, spirit of the labyrinth, Kalonian Hydra, Auriok Salvagers, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Keranos, Baneslayer Angel, Gaddock Teeg. There is Moat, which is impossible for the UR list to beat. Then there are "Moat Creatures", such as Veteran Explorer, Academy Rector, Mishra's Factory, and Tarmogoyf. All of the moat creatures force them to overextend into your wrath too.This is much like the synergy between Supreme Verdict and Jace, Architect of thought which existed in the last Standard Format.  Boseiju is a potential tool for Show and Tell decks.

Delver pilots in local Northeastern tournaments should run a maindeck Null Rod to combat EE, and Trygons to survive VF.  Trygon is my favorite creature in Delver right now.  

That doesn't mean they will run them, though. Multiple Delver players showed how underprepared they were to fight Oath in the coverage, which is as easy as splashing a third color, just like Trygon.

So, how many VF do you put in the board? Mystical for VF isn't reliable, nor is Vamp, due to them seemingly always having a Misstep (or 2).

This is getting ridiculous. First of all, they will often hold misstep in hopes you'll get ancestral in certain situations. Two, they don't always have it, believe it or not. Three, run four misstep yourself.

[Samoht]

We tried a URg Delver variant that eschewed Pyromancer for Tarmogoyf, picked up Volcanic Fallout and packed it full of REB's. Then we jammed the mirror and it was a coin flip anyway. It was decided almost solely on who resolved more Treasure Cruises. Notably, Matt Murray came back from an empty board facing down Chandra, the Firebrand and Tarmogoyf's with 2 TC, Ancestral, and some other spells and put the game away emphatically. The card is absurdly warping.

[enderfall]

Wow. Cavern of Souls in an Oath deck? Talk about ridiculous. Your plan is to ramp to 8 mana and hardcast an uncounterable Griselbrand? Good. Luck.

Also, a 3/2 Flying Insect does, in fact, utterly destroy "Moat".

[JarofFortune]

Wow. Cavern of Souls in an Oath deck? Talk about ridiculous. Your plan is to ramp to 8 mana and hardcast an uncounterable Griselbrand? Good. Luck.

Also, a 3/2 Flying Insect does, in fact, utterly destroy "Moat".

Having played over 250 games of the Delver-Oath matchup since this January, I can say that that scenario happens a lot more often than you'd think. Playing a tempo game vs Oath games two and three can be a recipe for disaster. Delver will win much more reliably if it focuses on the control side of the deck, giving the Oath player Plenty of time.

A 3/2 flying insect can be beaten.  Pyromancer is the scariest threat in the deck for most decks. You also have to consider that the guy with moat on the table won't be twiddling his thumbs for 7 turns. Moat can buy an insane amount of time.  This is not to mention that Workshops can't beat Moat.

[Chubby Rain]

We tried a URg Delver variant that eschewed Pyromancer for Tarmogoyf, picked up Volcanic Fallout and packed it full of REB's. Then we jammed the mirror and it was a coin flip anyway. It was decided almost solely on who resolved more Treasure Cruises. Notably, Matt Murray came back from an empty board facing down Chandra, the Firebrand and Tarmogoyf's with 2 TC, Ancestral, and some other spells and put the game away emphatically. The card is absurdly warping.

If I remember correctly, Chandra killed two Young Pyromancers and a Snapcaster Mage before dying to Time Walk + Snapcaster Mage + Lightning Bolt. I then stabilized I three life with an insane amount of gas, countering literally everything Tom did after that.

Alternatively, prevent them from interacting with you. It doesn't matter how many counters they have when you have Cavern of Souls. If Control Oath ran 2 cavern between the main and side, it would increase their Delver matchup winrate drastically. Then there are other cards like Night of Soul's betrayal, Chains of mephistopheles, spirit of the labyrinth, Kalonian Hydra, Auriok Salvagers, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Keranos, Baneslayer Angel, Gaddock Teeg. There is Moat, which is impossible for the UR list to beat. Then there are "Moat Creatures", such as Veteran Explorer, Academy Rector, Mishra's Factory, and Tarmogoyf. All of the moat creatures force them to overextend into your wrath too.This is much like the synergy between Supreme Verdict and Jace, Architect of thought which existed in the last Standard Format.  Boseiju is a potential tool for Show and Tell decks.

Heh, this really reminds me of testing. I ended up on Cavern + Auriok + Sphinx for the tournament. I also tested Stoneblade with Spirit of the Labyrinth though abandoned that when Rich Shay stole my Batterskull with Dack and equipped it to his Delver. That and he kept bolting or countering my Spirits and Mystics. Keranos also wasn't getting it done for me as even when it resolved, my opponent was able to sandbag a pyromancer and "go off" with Time Walk or just a ton of cantrips. As far as the "Moat Creatures", a flipped Delver flies over them and Young Pyromancer is an army in a can - no need to overextend when you pump out 2-3 tokens a turn easy.

[Hrishi]

Wow. Cavern of Souls in an Oath deck? Talk about ridiculous. Your plan is to ramp to 8 mana and hardcast an uncounterable Griselbrand? Good. Luck.

Also, a 3/2 Flying Insect does, in fact, utterly destroy "Moat".

Yes, when you restrict their plan to just needing that 3/2 flying insect, suddenly the deck is not so dangerous. You restrict their avenues of victory heavily and that is often enough to buy you time to win. You can deal with 4 Delvers when the rest of their deck does nothing. I played with 2 maindeck Moats at Champs on sunday, and I'd do it again given the choice. It was insane all day.

Also Brian and plenty of others have had a lot of success recently running Cavern of Souls in their Oath decks. I suggest you take a look at Vintage results rather than being closed-minded and calling it ridiculous.

[Protoaddict]

Just because a list or archetype does not exist right now does not mean it never will. Maybe look outside of what is known?

Like, if you were to build a deck that ignored the rest of the meta completely and just aimed to kill delver, what would you build? I mean I am not deck building maestro here but it seems like no one is looking for anything outside of what already exists. What about a dark time list? One that ran 4 Thoughtseize and 4 leyline of the void and Helm of obedience and board wipes? Maybe a strip mine/zuran orb/Crucible combo?

Don't say they are not viable, literally no one has actually tried them yet. We have had 1 event so far, which was the first major after the set was released. Saying this card is too format warping based on a single event is like saying you gave up on trying. Maybe it will prove to be too good, who is to say. But I HIGHLY doubt if you banned this card delver would go anywhere. At all.

[Demagoguery]

So why aren't we just playing more fair decks against Delver? It's why Merfolk and Delver are so good against a large chunk of the field, and do pretty well against each other from what I've seen (could be wrong) it's because they basically play out a very consistent "fair" game of magic as opposed to the boom-bust style of other decks. Dredge has also always been benefited by it's consistent nature, since once it got a single Bazaar it could do mostly whatever it needed and had things like Serum Powder to help it mull into it more effectively... Tutors used to allow us to do this when matches were longer and more consistent, but now they're just a little too slow and can be disrupted.

Sure, it makes you softer against broken decks, but I'm not saying just build a consistent deck like Delver, Bug, Merfolk, or even Dredge, but rather that I'm probably going to just have more board space devoted to make my deck more consistent and fair for those match ups (I've been boarding in things like extra StP's, Verdicts, and etc for a while now) while still being able to have a few big plays in other match ups.

After all, Verdict is a great card against both Pyromancer and Griselbrand in a control Oath build that doesn't instantly kill you off Vault since their sculpted grip of counters doesn't actually stop it. It also pitches to Force and Misdirection which is nice.

[serracollector]

Something based on dark confidant necropotence and chains of mephistopheles.....

[enderfall]

We have had 1 event so far, which was the first major after the set was released.

There is absolutely no way you can say there is only ONE event showing Delver's dominance. Delver has been everywhere online and in other Vintage tournaments since Khans has been released. Why do all of you fail to understand this fact? Is Champs the "biggest" tournament since Khan's came out? Of course... it just so happens to also be one of only 2-3 large Vintage events in an entire calendar year. But by no means is it the "only" event in the last 6 weeks.

Yes, when you restrict their plan to just needing that 3/2 flying insect, suddenly the deck is not so dangerous. You restrict their avenues of victory heavily and that is often enough to buy you time to win. You can deal with 4 Delvers when the rest of their deck does nothing. I played with 2 maindeck Moats at Champs on sunday, and I'd do it again given the choice. It was insane all day.

I'm glad that you had some success with Moat. I love Moat... been one of my favorite cards since I was a kid. Nonetheless, I'm sure you caught those Delver decks off-guard. However, if they suspect that you are on that plan, it becomes much easier for them to ignore whatever else you are trying to do and simply hold all of their counter magic for Moat. The thing I'm trying to stress to all of you is that Delver decks will generally always have more counters than any other control deck out there because they have the most efficient threats and the best draw engine/cantrips. It is very hard to push through a spell against Delver decks. Not impossible, but certainly not as easy as saying, "Well I have Moat in my deck, I'm going to be just fine".

[enderfall]

Something based on dark confidant necropotence and chains of mephistopheles.....

So, basically a UB version of Dance Magic Dance? I suppose that could be a thing.

[Hrishi]

Yes, when you restrict their plan to just needing that 3/2 flying insect, suddenly the deck is not so dangerous. You restrict their avenues of victory heavily and that is often enough to buy you time to win. You can deal with 4 Delvers when the rest of their deck does nothing. I played with 2 maindeck Moats at Champs on sunday, and I'd do it again given the choice. It was insane all day.

I'm glad that you had some success with Moat. I love Moat... been one of my favorite cards since I was a kid. Nonetheless, I'm sure you caught those Delver decks off-guard. However, if they suspect that you are on that plan, it becomes much easier for them to ignore whatever else you are trying to do and simply hold all of their counter magic for Moat. The thing I'm trying to stress to all of you is that Delver decks will generally always have more counters than any other control deck out there because they have the most efficient threats and the best draw engine/cantrips. It is very hard to push through a spell against Delver decks. Not impossible, but certainly not as easy as saying, "Well I have Moat in my deck, I'm going to be just fine".

I'm glad someone else thinks so, I love the card too! I will not deny that I caught them off-guard. I also would never claim that having Moat in your deck is enough to beat Delver. I just said that if you can resolve one, you're generally very favored to win. Do remember that some of their counter magic does not actually work against Moat. I believe my opponent's hand in one instance had Misstep, Flusterstorm and Pyroblast, all of which were irrelevant.

That said, I agree with you. I merely mentioned it to say that restricting their plan to "just" Delver takes away almost all the pressure they put on your gameplan. It is not an absolute trump, as often nothing is. It is a very powerful play that buys you a lot of time. Try it and see if you enjoy the card too!

As for UB Dance Magic Dance, I had attempted to build it a little while ago. The problem was that Chains was dead against shops and such. If that's not a problem for you, it seemed to work well.

[enderfall]

The more I read, the more I think Trygon is a perfect answer for Delver lists going forward. It just solves so many potential problems.

[Smmenen]

The more I read, the more I think Trygon is a perfect answer for Delver lists going forward. It just solves so many potential problems.

Since the NYSE 2 I've been running 2 maindeck Trygons in every list I've played, including the VSL.

This weekend, I ran 2 Trygons and 1 Dack maindeck.  With Oath and Workshops being the primary predators to Delver this past weekend, it was a bit of a no-brainer to continue to play Trygons.  He was an all-star.

[serracollector]

No need to just restrict it to blue black. Im sure some black white version running some number of chains and spirits or if you feel blue is necessary for say Notion Thief and Mental Misstep so be it. Hell at this point with everyone thinking delver is such hot shit id be tempted to try leyline.dec or enchantress with main deck rest in peace. There are plenty of ways to hate it out and still handle mud oath and big blue.

[portland]

Format will have to adapt, but in any deck, the ability to chain U draw threes is somewhat OP. I came back in a midgame of attrition with topdeck cruise, pyro, cruise, gush. Empty hand into 6 cards (one a land, 1 preordain, 4 counter) with 4 power of guys on the table. If that second cruise had been a thirst, it would still have been a good turn, just not an insta scoop turn.

Until there's a good answer to the card in general and the delver shell in particular, it's simply absurd. Had to run it at the weekend as I don't get to play that often and I didn't want to miss the chance before restriction. If I could play 4 ponder or 4 cruise, it's not a tricky choice.

Oddly, I don't know if 4 of is the right number in many decks, if you draw 2 by turn 2, it doesn't make you feel good. 3 is the right number in many builds imho.

Incidentally, the delver decks can evolve - I ran an MD multi purpose answer in anticipation of the craziness of it and likely best answers that won me a couple of games and requests from my opponents for judge to check my list in case I was preboarded. Was playing in the UK in a c. 30 player event that started before the big vintage one. Think there were 3 delver cruise, all made top 8, I lost one mirror in the Swiss and that was it.

[Templar]

I played against U/R Delver three times this past weekend (Caveat: I am a "full time" Oath player, so bear in mind with this anecdote that I probably had an at least slightly favorable match up), and while they tried to bury me under an avalanche of card advantage, I found the real threat in the deck (at least against me) was Young Pyromancer.  I won all three matches, and the only games I lost were to an early YP followed by tons of cantrips, which resulted in me getting beaten down by a lot of tokens before Gris/DSC (Yes, I know Dack Fayden is a card, but so is an early Tinker) could hit the table and turn things around.  And even then, I was too low on life for Gris to make a difference.  TC was effective, but without YP and a butt ton of elementals on the board, it didn't feel like enough card advantage to handle one massive fatty.

I think TC is good, but I don't think it needs restricting yet.  As I feel most people are saying, let the format sort it out for itself for a bit before doing anything.

[Protoaddict]

We have had 1 event so far, which was the first major after the set was released.

There is absolutely no way you can say there is only ONE event showing Delver's dominance. Delver has been everywhere online and in other Vintage tournaments since Khans has been released. Why do all of you fail to understand this fact? Is Champs the "biggest" tournament since Khan's came out? Of course... it just so happens to also be one of only 2-3 large Vintage events in an entire calendar year. But by no means is it the "only" event in the last 6 weeks.

I am not saying anything about delver really, as the title of this thread is Treasure Cruise. If anything your proving my point. Delver has plenty of results showing its been around for a damn long time now and performing well, Treasure cruise has results from basically one event of any worth. We are talking about if TC is too strong, and the context just happens to be delver because that is what people saw.

Let me put it this way. We don't even know how good TC is going to be in other decks yet. We all know delver because delver is prominent and relatively easy to build. TC may actually be better or worse than we realize but we cannot say because we have not really seen a large enough sample size.

For instance, is the card strong enough that it changes oath lists. Instead of oathing for Grislebrand, maybe Dragons breath comes back because you can now draw large numbers of cards reliably off a TC because oath fills your yard. Maybe we find out in that deck Dig through time is better and since that list is already well positioned to beat delver that becomes dominant? The point is we really just do not have a large enough sample size here to make the call.

[Templar]

I definitely prefer DTT in my deck, but sadly the only time I got to play it this weekend it got Mana Drained, which was unfortunate.  Luckily, my opponent didn't have any broken uses for all that mana, at least.  

[gribdogs]

I'm wondering how many Delver will show up at Team Serious in 11 days.  I guess I'll find out when I go up.  I'm tempted to run it myself, as 5 Ancestral Recall's seems too much fun to pass up!

[enderfall]

I guess there is no convincing many of you that TC is already broken, so I'll stop posting about it. Let's revisit this in January, shall we? Even then, I would not be surprised to see WotC do nothing because they operate at a glacial pace when it comes to Vintage.

[Protoaddict]

So here is a side discussion I think we may need to have, regardless of which side we call on about treasure cruise.

If a card proves to be too strong it goes on the restricted list. Ancestral is on there, Now people want TC on there, so on and so forth. As it stands pretty much any blue draw card that proves to be too good winds up on there, like Gifts Ungiven, Thirst, and who know what else that could be made in the future. All of these cards serve a similar role (same with the cantrips) but they are also generic enough a style of card that we can be pretty sure that similar cards may wind up there in the future. First brainstorm, then ponder, now we have preordain, etc, so that you can have 6 reliable cantrips in your list as opposed to 2 singletons.

So the purpose of the restricted list is to limit powerful cards so that you cannot rely on them, build a list around them (even though we already do in many cases). But we are now getting cards that are so similar that you can just use 1 copy of each and reliably get the effect, if not slightly modified but still perfectly acceptable. Even if TC is restricted to a 1 of, it can be so similar to Ancestral that you have doubled the number of draw 3s you are using. Like I mentioned before, Brainstorm and Ponder were restricted partially because of what they did to enable storm, and now we have preordain, and eventually we may have another comparable effect. What if we get a delve cantrip that can reliably be played for U?

There is going to come a point, since this is an eternal format and nothing rotates, where eventually we hit a breaking point that the restrictions do not matter and people just have the number of cards that fill the role they need redundantly. Black already has 3 tutors on the list, It would not be unreasonable to assume they may get a delve tutor. Maybe that turns out to be just as strong and it too needs to go on the list. Maybe we get to the point where you wouldn't want 2 of a card thats on the list anyways, simply because you have other redundant effects that have slight variations that make the first copy of them more powerful than the second of another thing. If you look at mana bases you can basically, in modern era vintage, get virtually any color at any time in your mana base because of overlap in fetches and duals. If you want a 1 mana Counterspell, take your pick. There are a fair number of cards on the restricted list right now that if you took off, I am not so sure people would play more than one copy, such as Yawgs Bargain, where by the deck is actually better off having more singletons to provide utility and tutors to find what it needs when it needs it.

So back on topic here. If you restrict TC, delver will still play it along side ancestral. Maybe it uses Dig through time instead of the next copy of TC. Maybe it uses something else. So you depower the deck ever so slightly, but you also do it to non delver decks that were running it without being what some people consider a problem.

And after all that, all I really really hope is that WOTC was smart enough not to make a Delve Timewalk in the next expansions so we do not need to have this conversation again.

[Hrishi]

I still believe it might be better to simply unrestrict Thirst or something to give non-tempo Delver decks a way to keep up in terms of card draw. Why not unrestrict all draw engines and let pilots pick which one they'd want to run?

[MaximumCDawg]

So here is a side discussion I think we may need to have, regardless of which side we call on about treasure cruise.

This is a smart topic, but I feel more optimistic about it than you.  The reason why: (1) tiny little differences matter tremendously in Vintage.  Just because we get a proliferation of very similar effects does not mean that we end up just having decks that glut themselves with copies of those effects; and (2) deck building is about more than just cramming in as many powerful cards as you can.

Case in point: tutors.  Black has half a dozen or more cards that do more or less what Vampiric and Demonic do.  Some impose deck-building restrictions, some are Sorceries, some cost more or less mana or life, but there are LOTS of ways to tutor any card in your deck in Black.  But, only the best get played.

Second case in point: cantrips.  It is not a natural thing that every blue deck necessarily wants to max out on Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain, though the printing of Treasure Cruise makes a strong argument in that direction.  

Third case in point: countermagic.  This is the poster child for diversity.  Even though there are more playable counterspells in Vintage than ever before, we do not see counterspells taking other slots in the deck.

I suspect that more diverse ways to get similar effects in Vintage will not actually change much.  The ratios of cards you play for a specific role will change over time, but probably not a huge amount.  The particular cards you play will be the ones that are narrowly better than their similar brethren.  If Brainstorm got off the restricted list, I feel like it would cannibalize slots currently used by Preordain and then Ponder, rather than just adding to the total number of cantrips in the deck.

What it will do, however, is get Vintage into the hands of more and more players as cheap versions of staple eternal effects act as stand-ins for reserve list cards.

[Protoaddict]

I think my point is similar to yours in that even when you have X amount of same/similar effects in front of you, you only want so many. There are diminishing returns. If you could run 30 ancestral recalls you may not want to because you'll just be drawing more recalls and no action after a while, etc.

I would even go as far as saying the first Treasure cruise may be better than the 2nd ancestral since so many of the little differences exist. TC is better against a misstep strong hand. TC has the potential to shrink a Goyf. TC can be burning wished. TC can be better against spheres. etc.

The restricted list does one thing well, which is to keep redundant abilities that stack well with themselves from hitting critical mass. This is mostly why minds desire is on the list, but also why cheap wheel effects in WoF and Windfall are there, so you cannot reliably get an opening hand of free mana and cards, wheel into another one, then again and again. But looking at the wheels, if they keep printing more wheel effects in the future, even ones that are worse, you may still get to the point where there are enough of them that even with the restrictions the wheelstorm still exist.

I don't know what that threshold is for any of the lists, but basically it is when the number of Effect X cards on the list equal or exceed the number you would want to run anyways. If we ever get to that point for any effect you may have to start looking at banning cards purely for power level and game balance.

The other side of this coin though, is that if you restrict TC, That list will simply run 1 copy and then probably just go back to Gush and still be better for it because it utilizes TC better than other decks. By cutting TC down to 4 you may actually be damaging other decks more than the culprit list here, and to make that determination I still think we need more time with the card in the format. At least until the new year.