Solutions to problems present themselves in different ways in different formats. In Standard, before Pack Rat rotated out, we were all waiting for new cards to be printed to exterminate the pesky vermin. In Legacy, we find ourselves turning to cards that nobody has played in years to combat new technology.

It wasn't long ago that people were complaining that Disciple of Griselbrand should be banned in Legacy. So people dug into one of the earliest sets in Magic and used "Mistveil Plains-with-upside" Karakas to give Maverick--the fairest of fair decks--a winning percentage against a one-card combo deck.

With access to so many gems, the ban list is a much cruder, more boring and needless tool than access to Gatherer and a little creativity is.

Today I want to talk about my top five overplayed and underplayed cards in Legacy. Some of these are on the list with beating Treasure Cruise Delver in mind, and some will emphasize the fact that current Delver lists are not yet fully tuned.

Let's start with the overplayed lot.

My Top Five Overplayed Cards in Legacy

#5 Chain Lightning

While it's true that sometimes Delver of Secrets // Delver of Secrets decks will dig for Lightning Bolt to kill you, as literally no other card in the deck could do the job, it's still not the case that a Delver of Secrets // Delver of Secrets deck should be regarded as a burn deck. The timing restriction on Chain Lightning coupled with the fact that it almost always acts as a worse removal spell than Forked Botl makes it very difficult to justify in non-burn decks. A 3-toughness creature is quiet rare in Legacy. Much rarer than facing two one-toughness creatures.

If it's the case that we're looking for a card that does more damage rather than one that's the better removal spell, then we should take the next logical step and play Goblin Guide rather than Delver of Secrets // Delver of Secrets. Half-measures are rarely wise steps to take in deck design. There is a reason the Goblin Guide Izzet Delver decks pre-Treasure Cruise only saw rare success and were considered worse than RUG Delver, and that reason was that they were less focused and their card choices could best be described as "confused".

I'm not saying that Burn is a bad choice. In fact, this might be the best time to be playing Burn in Legacy history. But I am saying that if you're going to do something, you should commit to it.

#4 Graveyard Hate Sided Against Treasure Cruise

The qualifying statement here is absolutely necessary, in particular with Dredge winning the Oakland Open. That said, people are bringing in graveyard hate against Treasure Cruise decks when they absolutely shouldn't be. I like a Rest in Peace when it enables Helm combo, but not when it's just trying to turn off one card in my opponent's deck.

I had an Infect opponent splashing white bring in Rest in Peace against my Delver deck in Minneapolis. I was surprised when he Swordsed one of my guys, but it seemed justifiable as having removal would help him win protracted games. Rest in Peace, however, interacts with one slot in the deck and is the type of card that is non-essential to winning games. I need creatures. I don't need Treasure Cruise.

The best counterpoint to this sideboard strategy is that when you bring in Rest in Peace against Dredge or Tarmogoyf, it doesn't matter who shot first unless you're already dead. If I resolve a Treasure Cruise before you resolve Rest in Peace, then your spell turns off three cards total that I could draw while I've already gotten a 3-for-1 out of the fourth. In other words, you're behind.

I'm not advocating cutting Rest in Peace from your sideboards. Reanimator is reasonably popular and Dredge and Lands are still around. I even like it against decks with Tarmogoyf and Treasure Cruise. I'm just saying that you shouldn't bring it in just because your opponent has one delve spell.

#3 Gitaxian Probe

It just wouldn't be "Ryan Overturf's Overplayed List" if it didn't feature Gitaxian Probe. I've done this topic to death time and time again, but the big point that I want to highlight here is that people are leaving these in in the Izzet Delver mirror, and that is just an insane liability. If you have a Young Pyromancer that isn't dying, you're winning anyway. And if you use it to pump a Swiftspear, you're taking two to deal one, or you're paying mana for Needle Drop. Cut. The. Chaff.

It's not like you're checking to see whether you need to leave Daze up. You always want to counter Treasure Cruise and you always want to kill their creatures. All of your other spells are good in the mirror and you need to cut something for those removal spells/Pyroblasts. I could see cutting Force of Will in the mirror, too, but Treasure Cruise and Young Pyromancer are both pretty good reasons to leave some or all of those in.

#2 Thoughtseize

With Treasure Cruise in the format, it's truer now than ever that Thoughtseize is better than Hymn to Tourach. That said, I'm not a fan of Thoughtseize in a field of redundant, fair decks with Brainstorm and Treasure Cruise.

I'm specifically referring to Thoughtseize out of decks like Deathblade and Sultai Delver. If you're killing slowly, the information isn't especially useful, particularly when everything is so redundant, and you'd probably just rather interact with the board and the stack--two things that your deck is quite good at.

I know he won his Open, but I much prefer Jimmy Dela Cruz's lack of Thoughtseize to Ben Glacy's inclusion.

Losing two life isn't for nothing in a Delver-infested metagame, either. No one is denying the raw power of Thoughtseize. The conditions just aren't really there for it to really shine in Legacy right now.

#1 Stifle

So, Stifle isn't even that played right now, but there are four copies in almost every Sultai Delver deck that I look at. I touched on why I don't like this last week, and I completely stand by what I said. There's a bit more discussion in the comments as well.

When Stifle was really good, one of the major arguments for it was its power level against Maverick and Miracles. Due to access to Abrupt Decay, Sultai Delver is already possibly the best positioned Delver deck against Miracles, and Maverick hasn't yet picked up the popularity that it probably should have at this point. Not to mention that cards like Golgari Charm and a myriad of other options help swing the Maverick matchup for Sultai Delver as well. What I'm getting at is that we can do better.

My Top Five Underplayed Cards in Legacy

Now for the exciting list.

#5 Wasteland

I don't think this card ever isn't on my list of underplayed Legacy cards. I fully understand that Wasteland is already widely played, but it gets left out in a lot of places where it should be included. Part of this could be a budgetary thing, but I believe that many players don't fully comprehend just how powerful Wasteland actually is. I touched on this one last week as well, but it bears repeating.

There are nonbasics that many decks will struggle immensely against without access to Wasteland. How is Izzet Delver reliably beating Punishing Grove, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or even Maze of Ith on occasion? Glacial Chasm? And what of all the games when your opponent stumbles on two mana? Wouldn't you like to have a way to just win those games instead of having them drag on until they draw their third land and beat you with the sheer volume of spells they've drawn?

I tried playing Wasteland-less Izzet Delver against ANT recently, and that's just a nightmare. You usually need to couple a few Daze and Spell Pierces together to beat them and their Duresses. Without being able to destroy their lands, they can safely play around a lot of these types of spells. That's why Storm is still seeing considerable play in the Delver Cruise metagame. Goblin Mountaineer and Chain Lightning aren't Wasteland and Spell Pierce.

Wasteland also just helps you crush people who play around Price of Progress. There are a lot of 3+ color decks in Legacy, and many of them play too many basics. Very frequently when they fetch a basic and play a dual, a single Wasteland will often cut their available lines of play in half.

Yes, games tend to go longer with Treasure Cruise in the format. But you play Wasteland over spells, and there are plenty of games where a single Wasteland early on would stop them from going long. You don't need that many colored sources. Plenty of 3-color decks have gotten by with 14 colored-sources for years.

#4 Punishing Fire

Or you could take advantage of the fact that people are playing creature decks without Wasteland. Punishing Grove is extremely powerful against stock Izzet Delver. I'm sure that Zack Wong crushed more than one Delver pilot on his way to the Top 8 of the Oakland Open.

It's going to be tougher for a deck like this to beat a Rest in Peace, so I'm more inclined to advocate something like Punishing Maverick, but either way, infestation of creature decks with the lack of Wasteland, such as Izzet Delver and Elves, makes me pretty big on Punishing Grove.

Or we could take a path with a little less setup...

#3 Darkblast

To be fair, thiswas in the first and second place list of the Oakland Open, but I still haven't seen a ton of it, and there was really no reason for the Dredge player not to play it. This card really shines in Dela Cruz's Sultai Delver deck though.

If you want to beat Elves and Young Pyromancer, this card is gas. It also has excellent synergy with Brainstorm, Tarmogoyf and Treasure Cruise. I would probably use one of those Stifle slots to maindeck this one.

There's not much else to say about Darkblast. Now that the card has seen some success, I fully expect more players to start jamming it.

Foil copies of this card are already quite scarce online, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a steeper price tag on it in the not-so-distant future. Be cautioned, however--that this card will rarely appear as more than a one-of, so speculate accordingly.

#2 Dig Through Time

If you follow the Vintage Super League at all, it seems like everybody is playing Dig Through Time or Treasure Cruise in their Vintage decks now. So why has one picked up steam in Legacy while the other has been largely ignored? It seems to me that the Sneak and Show players just haven't figured it out yet.

Now, I'm not a Sneak and Show expert, but tell me there's nothing we can cut from Jonathan Betts' 7th place deck in Oakland to make room for arguably the best card selection spell printed since Preordain:

Are we not able to trim our fatties with an amazing new spell to help find them? Can we trim Lotus Petal in a world with fewer Spell Pierces? Do we really want something like Misdirection to act as a fifth Force of Will instead of playing a spell that can act as a two-for-one in our favor to help win longer games?

I have played so many games on the Delver side of this matchup where if the Sneak and Show player had just one more card, they would simply kill me. Having an instant speed way to select the best two cards out of seven would have won many of those games, and I'm not understanding why this card isn't seeing the play that it deserves.

#1 Jötun Grunt

Spirit of the Labyrinth doesn't quite cut it as an answer to Treasure Cruise when Forked Bolts are abundant. Gaddock Teeg is awesome but has obvious diminishing returns and a similar weakness to red spells. The long forgotten one-time staple Jötun Grunt, however, just might have what it takes to be an all-star once again.

I can't take credit for this one. Kyle Olson asked me if I would play some games with the stock Izzet Delver deck against him to prep for GP New Jersey, and this was the tech that he was really excited about.

And damn. This one it tough to beat. You can't Bolt it. You almost always play around Daze anyway, since it's usually not good on turn two. And it stonewalls everything but Delver while racing. Did I mention that it hoses Treasure Cruise?

The premier white creature deck in the format has long been Death and Taxes, and without fetchlands or many spells, it's not the best shell for Jötun Grunt. But Maverick, Esper, Bant and a number of other decks could easily take advantage of this slumbering giant.

One of the best ways to combat Delver decks is just to be slightly slower and bigger than them, and Jötun Grunt does just that without being too fancy.

We haven't logged a ton of games and, to my knowledge, no one else is on this card yet, but it has interesting applications as a spec target. Non-foils are abundantly available from Coldnsnap and Commander and likely wouldn't see much movement even if the card explodes.

Foils from Coldsnap, however, could get out of control if this tech takes off. There are copies available in the $6-8 range, and I like picking up a few. The market right now is probably pretty small for this card, but the supply of Coldsnap foils is also really small.

If no one picks it up or if Cruise is banned, you won't see any movement on them any time soon, but if people start playing them, I could easily see a $20-$30 price tag. For a touch of perspective, Counterbalance is clearly more sought-after, but it's a $90-$100 foil uncommon from the same set.

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Those are my lists! What did you like/dislike and agree/disagree with? Is this list useful? How excited are you to cast Jötun Grunt again? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading.
-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter