In Legacy, Cruise and Dig went into different decks when both were legal, Dig was definitely not used as a substitute for Cruise after the latter was banned, but both cards still ultimately ended up banned; Dig only survived one B&R cycle longer than Cruise did. Cruise was played in aggro-control decks (i.e. Delver) while Dig was played in hard control (i.e. Miracles) and combo decks.

If Cruise had been banned before Dig was in Modern rather than both being banned at the same time, the best Dig deck would most likely have been Twin–and it seems likely to me that Twin with Dig would have gotten Dig banned in Modern as quickly as it was in Legacy (especially when you consider that there’s never been a card that was legal in Modern but banned in Legacy at any time in the history of the two formats)

The point of what I’m saying is that testing Dig in a Delver shell seriously risks underselling the card. Testing it in Jeskai Control and in the combo versions of Blue Moon (Kiki-Jiki and Breach/Emrakul) makes more sense.

Good point! I like this one a lot. I really miss playing against Infect… I loved that matchup, back when I was back on Grixis Delver. It was super skill intensive, always suspenseful, and heavily favored for me! 😉

Wizards’ reasoning when the banned DTT was that it would just replace Cruise. As UR Delver was the best Cruise deck by a mile I would be testing the veracity of their claim.

Not that it matters, won’t be testing it for some time.

But where it’d probably prove/disprove banning is elves, prime time, and devoted druid decks.

Though id love for it to get unbanned, i think a close variant on nic fit would be sweet in modern

Now I have to disagree with your statement: ¨the pieces have always been there, and there have been metagames that should favor answer decks. The fact that it’s only happened now is interesting, but inexplicable. Search for Azcanta and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria are fine cards and certainly help win the long game, but before them, there were plenty of options¨

I play UWx control for the last 3 years, and I have to say that in the last editions we receive a LOT of tools that make our bad or mediocre MU a lot better. Field of ruin is the perfect example in uw control strategies and the way to defeat big mana strategies in a solid way. Search for azcanta and teferi are BIG cards, and make BIG differences. Jeskai can’t remove noncreatures permanents (unles you use detention sphere in a deck that need play almost all there answer at instant speed). Now we have an instant wrath that exiles creatures and that give us a better Mu against hollow, finks, etc. Gideon OTT give UW the possibility to play full control and don’t be totally destroyed with burn. Revelation and Jace AOT wasn’t cards that can be decent in almost every MU, they are specific cards (revelation is horrible against fast decks and jace is great but most a SB card). Teferi, Gideon OTT, azcanta, field of ruin, and settle are great control cards, and now we have the tools to compete in modern.
Sorry for my English!

As for your comment on DTT: delver wouldn’t necessarily be a good fit. When it was legal, it only really saw play in rug scapeshift. Delver, much like burn and even jund at the time, all adopted treasure cruise for the raw card advantage and never cared much for the card selection offered by DTT. it’s a testament to treasure cruise’s power that completely off-colour decks we’re willing to splash for the card, but dig through time is another story entirely and you’d likely be disappointed by its performance in a delver shell. Two mana is a lot.

That said, if the card was ever unbanned, I would definitely try it across multiple decks and delver would indeed be one of them. Scapeshift would be my first choice though, as apart from anything else there’s already a history of the deck adopting the card (and resulting in the most convincing tier 1 streak in the deck’s history!). Other options are of course jeskai or UW control and either would be a good choice, but fishing for a combo piece in your opponent’s end step is what DTT does best.

All the best! Look forward to your new green article haha. Right up my street in terms of content.

Chord, for sure.

You get the better toolbox card and instead want raw value which Company gets. If you’re moving more towards the combo elves side then chord instead of coco 🙂

Had completely forgotten about Elves. That makes a lot of sense. Question is whether to drop Company or Chord.

Whatever you do make sure theres at least one dryad arbor in the mix 🙂

Maybe due to the way pairings work, a larger population of players leads to a larger percentage of them having to play against each other, causing more of them to hit the 4 loss threshold?

The effect on Elves doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal, but you have to remember just how much stronger the Heritage Druid draws are than all the other ones. Having another 4 copies of Druid that double as anything else you might need could be a big deal.

As for CoCo decks, I think GSZ replaces either CoCo or Chord. Decks with the Devoted Druid + Vizier combo seem like the best place to start, where GSZ gives them a lot of extra redundancy and makes it easier to fight the midrange plan B.

So it is true, the higher the attendance at an SCG event, the fewer decks get reported. That is…incredibly counterintuitive.

In Minneapolis, the cut was much cleaner and the record only went a bit below 64.