After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
This.
TC happens to shore up the mid-to-late game weakness that Delver and Burn had when they begin to lose steam. However Swiftspear has straight up improved the delver/burn decks as a whole. The threat base was always shady for U/R delver before this.
TBH Delver would still be a very potent deck choice even if TC was never printed. Which happens to be another mark against TC since its ban would merely make delver a good deck, rather than a dominant one.
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So KtK goes live on modo and people see ascendancy storm every other round. To fight that people start playing delver which crushes dork storm. Then it's back to business as usual with burn ALL OVER the place since it smashes delver. No idea what that means, but it's interesting none the less.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
That's an interesting take. IDK. I never found her to be an issue. Its one of those cards that is either really good or mediocre. But since both decks may be problematic, who knows, WotC may try to kill two birds with one stone.
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Delver has been fine for how long? Now Delver decks are suddenly a problem, it must be something printed recently to put Delver decks in the spot light. I dont think they will ban Delver.
Definitely agreed. Besides, the format has survived with Delver decks as top decks and not getting banned (2012 until Return to Ravnica was like that with RUG Delver and right before RTR there were 3 WUR Delver decks in a top 8). If anything is going to be banned it will be either Cruise, or if Wizards wants to hurt all types of Burn equally as well as Delver and URx Burn, Swiftspear. Delver will survive.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
The difference you are missing is Swiftspear is early damage some decks just can not over come, where TC is shoring up mid to late game gas for the decks.
On the draw playing against Swiftspear decks its not uncommon to be into single digit life when you can actually do something about your board state.
Also calling Swiftspear Goblin Guides 5-8 is very off. GG is only ever going to hit you for 2. Swiftspear rarely hits for less then 3, normally for 4 or more.
Edit: Thats not theory crafting, thats playing against the deck.
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Definitely agreed. Besides, the format has survived with Delver decks as top decks and not getting banned (2012 until Return to Ravnica was like that with RUG Delver and right before RTR there were 3 WUR Delver decks in a top 8). If anything is going to be banned it will be either Cruise, or if Wizards wants to hurt all types of Burn equally as well as Delver and URx Burn, Swiftspear. Delver will survive.
The Delver of 2 years ago pales in the power of the Delver of today.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
The difference you are missing is Swiftspear is early damage some decks just can not over come, where TC is shoring up mid to late game gas for the decks.
On the draw playing against Swiftspear decks its not uncommon to be into single digit life when you can actually do something about your board state.
Also calling Swiftspear Goblin Guides 5-8 is very off. GG is only ever going to hit you for 2. Swiftspear rarely hits for less then 3, normally for 4 or more.
I'd say that that last statement is false. You are usually not casting more than 3 spells in a turn. Besides, until you hit a Treasure Cruise, the amount of damage that you can do with it steadily decreases. It is an amazing card, but it is not normally hitting you for 4 or more every turn. It is not a red Goyf.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
The difference you are missing is Swiftspear is early damage some decks just can not over come, where TC is shoring up mid to late game gas for the decks.
On the draw playing against Swiftspear decks its not uncommon to be into single digit life when you can actually do something about your board state.
Also calling Swiftspear Goblin Guides 5-8 is very off. GG is only ever going to hit you for 2. Swiftspear rarely hits for less then 3, normally for 4 or more.
I'd say that that last statement is false. You are usually not casting more than 3 spells in a turn. Besides, until you hit a Treasure Cruise, the amount of damage that you can do with it steadily decreases. It is an amazing card, but it is not normally hitting you for 4 or more every turn. It is not a red Goyf.
In Delver, I agree. In burn not so much. The burn decks are being tuned to beat you very quick. By the way, 3 spells makes Swiftspear a 4/5.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
The difference you are missing is Swiftspear is early damage some decks just can not over come, where TC is shoring up mid to late game gas for the decks.
On the draw playing against Swiftspear decks its not uncommon to be into single digit life when you can actually do something about your board state.
Also calling Swiftspear Goblin Guides 5-8 is very off. GG is only ever going to hit you for 2. Swiftspear rarely hits for less then 3, normally for 4 or more.
I'd say that that last statement is false. You are usually not casting more than 3 spells in a turn. Besides, until you hit a Treasure Cruise, the amount of damage that you can do with it steadily decreases. It is an amazing card, but it is not normally hitting you for 4 or more every turn. It is not a red Goyf.
In Delver, I agree. In burn not so much. The burn decks are being tuned to beat you very quick. By the way, 3 spells makes Swiftspear a 4/5.
To be consistently hitting for that much you'll need phyrexian mana spells. Burn hasn't run Gut Shot in the longest time, and Delver only runs 4 Gitaxian Probe. Swifstspear normally hits for 2, but occasionally 3 or more.
Now, if you're just talking about general damage, in conjunction with burn, then that's a different story.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
The difference you are missing is Swiftspear is early damage some decks just can not over come, where TC is shoring up mid to late game gas for the decks.
On the draw playing against Swiftspear decks its not uncommon to be into single digit life when you can actually do something about your board state.
Also calling Swiftspear Goblin Guides 5-8 is very off. GG is only ever going to hit you for 2. Swiftspear rarely hits for less then 3, normally for 4 or more.
I'd say that that last statement is false. You are usually not casting more than 3 spells in a turn. Besides, until you hit a Treasure Cruise, the amount of damage that you can do with it steadily decreases. It is an amazing card, but it is not normally hitting you for 4 or more every turn. It is not a red Goyf.
In Delver, I agree. In burn not so much. The burn decks are being tuned to beat you very quick. By the way, 3 spells makes Swiftspear a 4/5.
The Burn decks are still only drawing 1 card a turn until they can cast Cruise. They are also running several 2-drop spells (Skullcrack, Searing Blaze, Searing Blood, Boros Charm) and 8 non-Swiftspear creatures. Because of this I don't think that they can consistently get Swiftspear past a 3/4 unless if they get a Cruise. Also, I know that 3 spells make it a 4/5. I was objecting to you saying that Swiftspear normally hits you for 4 or more. You can even make an argument for 4 damage, but Burn is not casting 4 spells in a turn, which is necessary for Swiftspear to hit you for more than 4.
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
All I know is, I've found that Treasure Cruise seems to almost never make a difference in the result, whereas Swiftspear is very relevant. You might say "well, Treasure Cruise's power isn't as obvious because it isn't itself the card that kills you," but whenever Treasure Cruise got cast, it either was a complete win-more card (i.e. it would've been the same as if it were a Peek because functionally all it was necessary for was to pump that Swiftspear) or did essentially nothing to help them.
I will admit that, as I play GR Tron, I may have an extremely skewed perspective, and in different matchups it might be different. But Monastery Swiftspear was the card that I was continually noticing as what was more powerful in the deck than before, not Treasure Cruise.
All I know is, I've found that Treasure Cruise seems to almost never make a difference in the result, whereas Swiftspear is very relevant. You might say "well, Treasure Cruise's power isn't as obvious because it isn't itself the card that kills you," but whenever Treasure Cruise got cast, it either was a complete win-more card (i.e. it would've been the same as if it were a Peek because functionally all it was necessary for was to pump that Swiftspear) or did essentially nothing to help them.
I will admit that, as I play GR Tron, I may have an extremely skewed perspective, and in different matchups it might be different. But Monastery Swiftspear was the card that I was continually noticing as what was more powerful in the deck than before, not Treasure Cruise.
This is why I really dislike theoryland. Almost as much as I dislike ban mania. We have Val and Boc playing out imaginary Burn scenarios using unknown lists, and we have you and I extrapolating from matchups with entirely different decks, also with unknown lists. There's just no ground to be gained by any party, and a lot of wheel spinning to do.
Unfortunately, we are at a point where we have two problems. The first problem is, obviously, that we need more data. But that has been a problem since about a week before KTK came out, and as the last 20+ pages can attest, it hasn't stopped us from having a jolly old time. The good news is that this problem has a solution (time) and the solution is naturally being achieved every week we get closer to GPs. So problem one will be gone before we know it. The bad news is that leaves us with the second problem, which is much more complicated. If we get to a situation where UR Delver and Burn each remain at about 15%+ of MTGO, and their paper prevalence catches up to there, what do we want to see banned from the decks? TC or MS? Both cards came out at the same time, both decks adopted both cards pretty quickly (admittedly, not all Burn lists use TC though, which might be something to consider on its own), and the decks both took off right when they got both cards. So how do we figure out which card, if any, or if not both, is to blame?
Our datasets are somewhat silent on this, because we don't have full event data. For instance, if we knew that there were 50 Burn decks at a GP and 25 played TC/MS and 25 just played TC. By day 2, a whopping 20 of the TC/MS decks made 7-2 or better, but only 5 of the MS-only decks did. That would strongly suggest that TC is the piece that pushed Burn over the top in that scenario. Sadly, we just don't have that kind of data. Wizards does, but I question whether or not they will use it at that depth. So it's a question of what we can do instead of that in-depth analysis that we don't have the data to support.
All I know is, I've found that Treasure Cruise seems to almost never make a difference in the result, whereas Swiftspear is very relevant. You might say "well, Treasure Cruise's power isn't as obvious because it isn't itself the card that kills you," but whenever Treasure Cruise got cast, it either was a complete win-more card (i.e. it would've been the same as if it were a Peek because functionally all it was necessary for was to pump that Swiftspear) or did essentially nothing to help them.
I will admit that, as I play GR Tron, I may have an extremely skewed perspective, and in different matchups it might be different. But Monastery Swiftspear was the card that I was continually noticing as what was more powerful in the deck than before, not Treasure Cruise.
This is why I really dislike theoryland. Almost as much as I dislike ban mania. We have Val and Boc playing out imaginary Burn scenarios using unknown lists, and we have you and I extrapolating from matchups with entirely different decks, also with unknown lists. There's just no ground to be gained by any party, and a lot of wheel spinning to do.
Unfortunately, we are at a point where we have two problems. The first problem is, obviously, that we need more data. But that has been a problem since about a week before KTK came out, and as the last 20+ pages can attest, it hasn't stopped us from having a jolly old time. The good news is that this problem has a solution (time) and the solution is naturally being achieved every week we get closer to GPs. So problem one will be gone before we know it. The bad news is that leaves us with the second problem, which is much more complicated. If we get to a situation where UR Delver and Burn each remain at about 15%+ of MTGO, and their paper prevalence catches up to there, what do we want to see banned from the decks? TC or MS? Both cards came out at the same time, both decks adopted both cards pretty quickly (admittedly, not all Burn lists use TC though, which might be something to consider on its own), and the decks both took off right when they got both cards. So how do we figure out which card, if any, or if not both, is to blame?
Our datasets are somewhat silent on this, because we don't have full event data. For instance, if we knew that there were 50 Burn decks at a GP and 25 played TC/MS and 25 just played TC. By day 2, a whopping 20 of the TC/MS decks made 7-2 or better, but only 5 of the MS-only decks did. That would strongly suggest that TC is the piece that pushed Burn over the top in that scenario. Sadly, we just don't have that kind of data. Wizards does, but I question whether or not they will use it at that depth. So it's a question of what we can do instead of that in-depth analysis that we don't have the data to support.
What makes it harder is that both kinds of spells have a precedent. Wizards has shown with Nacatl that they are willing to ban combat-only creatures like Swiftspear, but they have also shown with AV that cheap draw spells can be banned.
Delver is a thing because it stands up to Burn - which is pushing everything else out the format.
If you slow Burn down, you allow other decks in to fight Delver. What that cut is, I'm not sure, but it isn't Treasure Cruise.
My prediction - Treasure Cruise gets banned because of all the obvious reasons, and then we watch the world Burn...
Then we ban something from Burn (either the fun police - Eidolon of the Great Revel or the 3/4 haste for R) meta fixes up, and everyone treats TC as the new BBE because non-combo Blue decks stop being in the meta.
Well is it that ridiculous? When was the last really good burn spell printed? How about a decent cantrip? I mean the format's growth is and has been seriously restricted because of the power level of certain decks. I mean the power level has to rise but at a healthy rate. And when you have a card like delver which is slightly better than anything else, if used correctly, I don't think it is ridiculous to look at as a ban prospect. Now I'm not saying it should be banned, rather it is quite erroneous to say that it has to be off of the table because it hasn't been there in the past.
The last good burn spells printed were Boros Charm and Skullcrack, both of which were in the block before Theros. And Theros mostly sucked, so it's not like the lack of playables there was indicative of any wider policy. It was just weak design. Now in KTK, we obviously have a bunch of good spells to consider. By all indications, Wizards is not restricting any of its card design because of some sense that decks are too powerful. It's not even clear how much they test for Modern. This is a nonrotating format with a high power level. Just because it has slightly better cards, does not mean those slightly better cards need to be banned based on some totally speculative notion about Wizards not printing powerful cards.
Further, you say that cards are looked at for bans because they are either format warping or busted and say delver is neither. From my perspective I don't think its crazy to say delver is both.
Before KTK, the deck was fine for 2-3 years. A month after KTK, the deck is approaching problem status. That strongly suggests that the problem was not Delver, which was totally safe for 2-3 years of new cards and new synergies. It seems way, way more likely that the problem is TC (or MS), the card that appeared and instantly made the deck too strong. Now, if Delver had been bouncing up and down as some broken powerhouse for years, then you might have an argument. Pod, for instance, could be in that category. But Delver has NEVER been a problem and suddenly it might be, unlike something like Pod which has often approached problem status.
It's like people just want to be that novel guy to suggest some zany new ban idea. No one is thinking this through any more.
The problem often isn't just new cards. It's new cards and the metagame changes they make. The appearance of TC made delver better, which at the same time made the deck that was a bad matchup for burn disappear because that deck lost to delver. And so on and so forth.
It's not as simple as one new card becoming legal. Even when TC gets banned, the metagame won't be the same as pre-kans, mostly because we now have fetches and DTT, so we won't have again that preKTK meta even with TC banned. In this new future specific metagame burn might be better or worse than preKTK.
It's all about win% against the other decks and what % of the field those decks represent.
PD: burn is like affinity, if you want to beat it you can beat it, with any deck. On the other hand, you can't say the same about ur delver.
I think the problem (if we're calling it that) isn't Swiftspear or Treasure Cruise, but the combination of the two because they feed off of the same buildaround. You run a brickload of cantrips and cheap spells to fuel Swiftspear and fill the graveyard for Cruise. Take one of those things out, and building around the other might not be worth it to the same extent, but either makes the other more viable.
That said, I definitely think Delver would run TC even without Swiftspear, so it might mostly be a case of TC making Monastery Swiftspear powerful.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
In burn guide is better than miss spearz against many decks such as uwr control (aka decks that always instatly your creatures very fast or decks that put fast big blockers).
Woah woah woah. Swiftspear is not Goblin Guide 5-8. Pretty sure everyone by now has accepted that Swiftspear is miles better than Goblin Guide. The poor old gobbo has been knocked off the top podium into silver. Guide is now a poor man's Swiftspear 5-8.
I thought my quote was pretty clear, both with the quotation marks around "basically", and the qualification about the removal-heavy format. Yeah, it's better than Guide in probably 80% of board states and situations, but not so much better by all metrics. Great card, don't get me wrong. People just overblow how strong it is, at least in the lists we have seen now. I've tested against TC/MS Burn with 5 different decks in the past week and in all cases, MS was never the most unfair card. That award always went to TC. In fairness, I always played decks that did run the removal interaction needed to handle MS. But isn't that most decks in the format? And isn't that removal the same reason that other cards like Glistener Elf and his ilk have remained ban-free since PT Philly? Make no mistake; MS is a great card. It's just not nearly as warping as TC.
Pretty sure dig through time is there to help combo, I don't think those are going to be unbanned to serve as yet another tool for blue. Combo doesn't seem few and far between to me.
Having 6 or 7 things in your grave to cast DTT is going to be hard for combo
After playing some more against the decks, I think Monastery Swiftspear is more responsible for the rise of UR Delver and Burn. Treasure Cruise certainly doesn't explain why the Burn lists that aren't even running it are still doing well.
Treasure Cruise is great, especially in UR Delver, but the extra aggression that Monastery Swiftspear provides (it can easily feel like a Young Pyromancer that costs 1 less mana and has haste) is a huge factor in sealing up games quickly.
I honestly think that Burn and UR Delver without Monastery Swiftspear would be worse off than Burn and UR Delver without Treasure Cruise. I can't say that Monastery Swiftspear is exactly broken, but I think it's more responsible for those decks dominating the metagame than Treasure Cruise.
Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
Mind sharing the decklist?
I think Treasure Cruise is in a complicated position. In burn it's essentially a burn spell that does 6-9 damage because it's going to draw you 2-3 Lightning Bolt effects. That's powerful, but comes at the cost of hurting your mirror matchup where you'll be punished for running a more painful manabase; a straight red or r/w deck doesn't need any extra cards to kill you. This is something worth considering when burn makes up so much of the meta.
I'd argue in delver the card is much weaker. Delver isn't going to draw 2-3 Lightning Bolts (unless they're incredibly lucky), they're usually going to draw some combination of relatively weak removal (Fork Bolt, Gut Shot, Arc Trail, Vapor Snag), conditional countermagic, creatures with no immediate impact, and cantrips to power out another Cruise. I can't tell you how many times I've casted Cruise and drawn into land, Spell Pierce, Delver or something equally terrible when drawing two Bolts would have just won me the game. I won a game with Junk against UR delver last night after the opponent resolved three Cruises because despite how many cards he was drawing the deck's card quality is just so weak in comparison. The deck has so many cards that do very little on their own (Thought Scour, Serum Visions, Gut Shot, Gitaxian Probe, even Swiftspear to some extent). Even chaining cantrips with a Pyro or Swiftspear out isn't very strong against a deck that plays Abrupt Decay, Maelstrom Pulse or especially Golgari Charm out of the side, with 6-8 discard spells to help them resolve.
UR delver is built to cast Treasure Cruise and is probably the only reason it's a viable deck. From my testing I don't think it has the potential to be a dominant deck though. It's still an interactive deck playing a pretty fair game. It needs a card like Treasure Cruise to compete with decks that are playing much less fair strategies or even just more powerful cards. It also runs a lot of cards that are pretty weak on their own to ensure it can abuse Treasure Cruise. And despite all the initial hype about every deck imaginable splashing for Cruise, we haven't seen this happening at all. It's not a card you can just throw into any deck; even delver has made considerable concessions to run it (cutting Snapcasters and running Thought Scour, it almost makes my head hurt how little sense that would have made prior to TC).
If Cruise is banned it'll likely be the end of UR delver. Swiftspear is strong but probably not strong enough to carry the deck without Cruise. On the other hand, it will not be the end of burn. Burn was putting up top tier results before Cruise was legal, and continues to now even without the card in its 75. It would be short-sighted to assume banning Cruise would kill off both delver and burn. The net effect would then probably be losing delver while burn continues to be a problem; something I'm not entirely excited to see.
There's also the metagame factors mentioned by others to consider. BGx is more than capable of policing delver; it's just utterly useless against burn. Burn existing in such large numbers pushes BGx out of the format, as we've seen in its metagame representation, and in turn makes decks like delver that were policed by it much stronger. If burn were taken down a notch, whether by bans, a metagame shift, or otherwise, it would let BGx back into the metagame which in turn would reduce delver representation. Delver remains at its current power level but appears in smaller numbers, BGx is allowed back into the metagame, and we can all stop asking ourselves how to beat burn and get back to talking about Tarmogoyf/Abrupt Decay/Manamorphose bans. Life returns to normal.
Finally, I use "likely" and "probably" a lot because I do not have the data to conclusively say TC is not the problem. It is my opinion that burn is the problem, not Cruise or only burn decks with Cruise, but it remains to be seen whether that's true or not. Take this for what you will.
Pretty sure dig through time is there to help combo, I don't think those are going to be unbanned to serve as yet another tool for blue. Combo doesn't seem few and far between to me.
Having 6 or 7 things in your grave to cast DTT is going to be hard for combo
Pretty sure dig through time is there to help combo, I don't think those are going to be unbanned to serve as yet another tool for blue. Combo doesn't seem few and far between to me.
Having 6 or 7 things in your grave to cast DTT is going to be hard for combo
UMMMM Splinter twin says hello.
Twin is more of a combo control deck, i meant pure combo
So we ban TC, burn is still awesome even without it, then what?
Personally I'd rather play against delver than someone spamming bolts at my face all day.
Also, I know this has been mentioned bit it seems to be ignored by many:
Just looking at top 8's doesn't necessarily tell you a deck's win %. If all decks are equal power level but half the field is jamming delver, you would expect to see ~4 delver decks in the top 8. You see this in Legacy a lot with decks like Lands and Painter where they have really high win % but they aren't played as much so they don't place as often. Part of the reason is simply the cost of the decks. Most people I know who play legacy already have blue duals, FoW, etc., so yeah, I'd rather just jam delver. Something similar may be going on in modern (people buying in to Delver/Burn rather than shelling out for BGx). I mean is it possible that really Zoo is completely broken right now we just aren't seeing as many top 8's because of prevalence?
I could be wrong but I don't think we have the data to really say either way just yet. Banning for prevalence due to power level (which would likely correlate with win %) is one thing. Banning for prevalence due to cost seems a bit shady to me.
So we ban TC, burn is still awesome even without it, then what?
Personally I'd rather play against delver than someone spamming bolts at my face all day.
Also, I know this has been mentioned bit it seems to be ignored by many:
Just looking at top 8's doesn't necessarily tell you a deck's win %. If all decks are equal power level but half the field is jamming delver, you would expect to see ~4 delver decks in the top 8. You see this in Legacy a lot with decks like Lands and Painter where they have really high win % but they aren't played as much so they don't place as often. Part of the reason is simply the cost of the decks. Most people I know who play legacy already have blue duals, FoW, etc., so yeah, I'd rather just jam delver. Something similar may be going on in modern (people buying in to Delver/Burn rather than shelling out for BGx). I mean is it possible that really Zoo is completely broken right now we just aren't seeing as many top 8's because of prevalence?
I could be wrong but I don't think we have the data to really say either way just yet. Banning for prevalence due to power level (which would likely correlate with win %) is one thing. Banning for prevalence due to cost seems a bit shady to me.
1. I don't think Wizards cares what the win % is. They just care if the deck has prevalence past a certain point. Reference BBE Jund and DRS BGx Midrange, both of which had win rates at probably around (or just over) 50%, but had metagame shares at 25-30% and 20-25% respectively. At least, that's all we can infer from the public ban announcements. So it won't matter if Delver/Burn has a win rate of 50% if it is actually sending 4 decks to every T8. That's still too much Delver/Burn for Wizards, and too much for the average Modern player.
2. Even if we had the win rates, which would probably be close to 50%, that still wouldn't tell us much about the deck's actual power unless it was really, insanely broken. A lot of inexperienced and bad players will jump on the hype train and play the deck anyway, which will skew that win rate down. So maybe the guys who made T8 had unstoppable 90% win percentages. But then a bunch of guys kind of scrub out at 20%, and many others just meander along at ~50%. That's another reason why raw prevalence, not just win rate, is rightfully more important. At least, barring some insanely detailed analysis which I am sure Wizards does not conduct.
3. Before KTK, Burn really wasn't that out of control. It never got over that "magical" 13% marker on MTGO, which is where many other tier 1 decks of the format has been at least once (Melira Pod, UR Twin, UWR Control, and Affinity). And it was totally fine in paper. It's only the decks that exceed that (Jund and BGx Midrange w/ DRS) which cause problems, and we have no idea if Burn was going to surpass that point. Many decks do not. Some do.
4. At the very least, a TC ban would likely increase the number of BGx Midrange decks, which are right now at historic lows at sub 2%. Between MS and TC, it is pretty clear which of the two is really murdering those poor BGx decks. I mean, BGx Midrange is supposed to thrive in the Delver matchup! It was something that kept Delver down for years. And suddenly, Delver is everywhere and BGx midrange can't do drap. TC is the likeliest culprit of that, or at least the disproportionate cause of it relative to MS or other cards in the deck. Don't get me wrong; I don't like those BGx decks much more than most people. But one card shouldn't render them extinct.
Pretty sure dig through time is there to help combo, I don't think those are going to be unbanned to serve as yet another tool for blue. Combo doesn't seem few and far between to me.
Having 6 or 7 things in your grave to cast DTT is going to be hard for combo
UMMMM Splinter twin says hello.
Twin is more of a combo control deck, i meant pure combo
Scapeshift runs Dig Through Time. Cantrips + Ramp are easy enough to pitch into the GY.
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This.
TC happens to shore up the mid-to-late game weakness that Delver and Burn had when they begin to lose steam. However Swiftspear has straight up improved the delver/burn decks as a whole. The threat base was always shady for U/R delver before this.
TBH Delver would still be a very potent deck choice even if TC was never printed. Which happens to be another mark against TC since its ban would merely make delver a good deck, rather than a dominant one.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Looks like we are back to theoryland. But I will try to at least contribute some less theoretical theory to this.
I'm doing a ton of tests of this new Junk list against a TC Burn deck with Swiftspear and TC. Swiftspear is strong, aggressive, and very powerful. But it isn't even close to the same level of unfairness as casting Cruise for U on turn 4. That's mostly unrecoverable for my Junk deck. There's only so much mileage you can get out of a card that is "basically" Goblin Guide 5-8, especially in a format filled with removal. And hell, it's not much stronger than most Affinity or Infect play lines anyway. But TC? In about 30 tests, I've only won about 30% of the games where TC resolved as opposed to just over 50% where MS does. Even by the most abstract gauges of card power, TC is miles stronger than MS.
That's an interesting take. IDK. I never found her to be an issue. Its one of those cards that is either really good or mediocre. But since both decks may be problematic, who knows, WotC may try to kill two birds with one stone.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Definitely agreed. Besides, the format has survived with Delver decks as top decks and not getting banned (2012 until Return to Ravnica was like that with RUG Delver and right before RTR there were 3 WUR Delver decks in a top 8). If anything is going to be banned it will be either Cruise, or if Wizards wants to hurt all types of Burn equally as well as Delver and URx Burn, Swiftspear. Delver will survive.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
The difference you are missing is Swiftspear is early damage some decks just can not over come, where TC is shoring up mid to late game gas for the decks.
On the draw playing against Swiftspear decks its not uncommon to be into single digit life when you can actually do something about your board state.
Also calling Swiftspear Goblin Guides 5-8 is very off. GG is only ever going to hit you for 2. Swiftspear rarely hits for less then 3, normally for 4 or more.
Edit: Thats not theory crafting, thats playing against the deck.
The Delver of 2 years ago pales in the power of the Delver of today.
I'd say that that last statement is false. You are usually not casting more than 3 spells in a turn. Besides, until you hit a Treasure Cruise, the amount of damage that you can do with it steadily decreases. It is an amazing card, but it is not normally hitting you for 4 or more every turn. It is not a red Goyf.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
In Delver, I agree. In burn not so much. The burn decks are being tuned to beat you very quick. By the way, 3 spells makes Swiftspear a 4/5.
To be consistently hitting for that much you'll need phyrexian mana spells. Burn hasn't run Gut Shot in the longest time, and Delver only runs 4 Gitaxian Probe. Swifstspear normally hits for 2, but occasionally 3 or more.
Now, if you're just talking about general damage, in conjunction with burn, then that's a different story.
The Burn decks are still only drawing 1 card a turn until they can cast Cruise. They are also running several 2-drop spells (Skullcrack, Searing Blaze, Searing Blood, Boros Charm) and 8 non-Swiftspear creatures. Because of this I don't think that they can consistently get Swiftspear past a 3/4 unless if they get a Cruise. Also, I know that 3 spells make it a 4/5. I was objecting to you saying that Swiftspear normally hits you for 4 or more. You can even make an argument for 4 damage, but Burn is not casting 4 spells in a turn, which is necessary for Swiftspear to hit you for more than 4.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I will admit that, as I play GR Tron, I may have an extremely skewed perspective, and in different matchups it might be different. But Monastery Swiftspear was the card that I was continually noticing as what was more powerful in the deck than before, not Treasure Cruise.
This is why I really dislike theoryland. Almost as much as I dislike ban mania. We have Val and Boc playing out imaginary Burn scenarios using unknown lists, and we have you and I extrapolating from matchups with entirely different decks, also with unknown lists. There's just no ground to be gained by any party, and a lot of wheel spinning to do.
Unfortunately, we are at a point where we have two problems. The first problem is, obviously, that we need more data. But that has been a problem since about a week before KTK came out, and as the last 20+ pages can attest, it hasn't stopped us from having a jolly old time. The good news is that this problem has a solution (time) and the solution is naturally being achieved every week we get closer to GPs. So problem one will be gone before we know it. The bad news is that leaves us with the second problem, which is much more complicated. If we get to a situation where UR Delver and Burn each remain at about 15%+ of MTGO, and their paper prevalence catches up to there, what do we want to see banned from the decks? TC or MS? Both cards came out at the same time, both decks adopted both cards pretty quickly (admittedly, not all Burn lists use TC though, which might be something to consider on its own), and the decks both took off right when they got both cards. So how do we figure out which card, if any, or if not both, is to blame?
Our datasets are somewhat silent on this, because we don't have full event data. For instance, if we knew that there were 50 Burn decks at a GP and 25 played TC/MS and 25 just played TC. By day 2, a whopping 20 of the TC/MS decks made 7-2 or better, but only 5 of the MS-only decks did. That would strongly suggest that TC is the piece that pushed Burn over the top in that scenario. Sadly, we just don't have that kind of data. Wizards does, but I question whether or not they will use it at that depth. So it's a question of what we can do instead of that in-depth analysis that we don't have the data to support.
What makes it harder is that both kinds of spells have a precedent. Wizards has shown with Nacatl that they are willing to ban combat-only creatures like Swiftspear, but they have also shown with AV that cheap draw spells can be banned.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
If you slow Burn down, you allow other decks in to fight Delver. What that cut is, I'm not sure, but it isn't Treasure Cruise.
My prediction - Treasure Cruise gets banned because of all the obvious reasons, and then we watch the world Burn...
Then we ban something from Burn (either the fun police - Eidolon of the Great Revel or the 3/4 haste for R) meta fixes up, and everyone treats TC as the new BBE because non-combo Blue decks stop being in the meta.
The problem often isn't just new cards. It's new cards and the metagame changes they make. The appearance of TC made delver better, which at the same time made the deck that was a bad matchup for burn disappear because that deck lost to delver. And so on and so forth.
It's not as simple as one new card becoming legal. Even when TC gets banned, the metagame won't be the same as pre-kans, mostly because we now have fetches and DTT, so we won't have again that preKTK meta even with TC banned. In this new future specific metagame burn might be better or worse than preKTK.
It's all about win% against the other decks and what % of the field those decks represent.
PD: burn is like affinity, if you want to beat it you can beat it, with any deck. On the other hand, you can't say the same about ur delver.
That said, I definitely think Delver would run TC even without Swiftspear, so it might mostly be a case of TC making Monastery Swiftspear powerful.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
I thought my quote was pretty clear, both with the quotation marks around "basically", and the qualification about the removal-heavy format. Yeah, it's better than Guide in probably 80% of board states and situations, but not so much better by all metrics. Great card, don't get me wrong. People just overblow how strong it is, at least in the lists we have seen now. I've tested against TC/MS Burn with 5 different decks in the past week and in all cases, MS was never the most unfair card. That award always went to TC. In fairness, I always played decks that did run the removal interaction needed to handle MS. But isn't that most decks in the format? And isn't that removal the same reason that other cards like Glistener Elf and his ilk have remained ban-free since PT Philly? Make no mistake; MS is a great card. It's just not nearly as warping as TC.
Having 6 or 7 things in your grave to cast DTT is going to be hard for combo
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Mind sharing the decklist?
I think Treasure Cruise is in a complicated position. In burn it's essentially a burn spell that does 6-9 damage because it's going to draw you 2-3 Lightning Bolt effects. That's powerful, but comes at the cost of hurting your mirror matchup where you'll be punished for running a more painful manabase; a straight red or r/w deck doesn't need any extra cards to kill you. This is something worth considering when burn makes up so much of the meta.
I'd argue in delver the card is much weaker. Delver isn't going to draw 2-3 Lightning Bolts (unless they're incredibly lucky), they're usually going to draw some combination of relatively weak removal (Fork Bolt, Gut Shot, Arc Trail, Vapor Snag), conditional countermagic, creatures with no immediate impact, and cantrips to power out another Cruise. I can't tell you how many times I've casted Cruise and drawn into land, Spell Pierce, Delver or something equally terrible when drawing two Bolts would have just won me the game. I won a game with Junk against UR delver last night after the opponent resolved three Cruises because despite how many cards he was drawing the deck's card quality is just so weak in comparison. The deck has so many cards that do very little on their own (Thought Scour, Serum Visions, Gut Shot, Gitaxian Probe, even Swiftspear to some extent). Even chaining cantrips with a Pyro or Swiftspear out isn't very strong against a deck that plays Abrupt Decay, Maelstrom Pulse or especially Golgari Charm out of the side, with 6-8 discard spells to help them resolve.
UR delver is built to cast Treasure Cruise and is probably the only reason it's a viable deck. From my testing I don't think it has the potential to be a dominant deck though. It's still an interactive deck playing a pretty fair game. It needs a card like Treasure Cruise to compete with decks that are playing much less fair strategies or even just more powerful cards. It also runs a lot of cards that are pretty weak on their own to ensure it can abuse Treasure Cruise. And despite all the initial hype about every deck imaginable splashing for Cruise, we haven't seen this happening at all. It's not a card you can just throw into any deck; even delver has made considerable concessions to run it (cutting Snapcasters and running Thought Scour, it almost makes my head hurt how little sense that would have made prior to TC).
If Cruise is banned it'll likely be the end of UR delver. Swiftspear is strong but probably not strong enough to carry the deck without Cruise. On the other hand, it will not be the end of burn. Burn was putting up top tier results before Cruise was legal, and continues to now even without the card in its 75. It would be short-sighted to assume banning Cruise would kill off both delver and burn. The net effect would then probably be losing delver while burn continues to be a problem; something I'm not entirely excited to see.
There's also the metagame factors mentioned by others to consider. BGx is more than capable of policing delver; it's just utterly useless against burn. Burn existing in such large numbers pushes BGx out of the format, as we've seen in its metagame representation, and in turn makes decks like delver that were policed by it much stronger. If burn were taken down a notch, whether by bans, a metagame shift, or otherwise, it would let BGx back into the metagame which in turn would reduce delver representation. Delver remains at its current power level but appears in smaller numbers, BGx is allowed back into the metagame, and we can all stop asking ourselves how to beat burn and get back to talking about Tarmogoyf/Abrupt Decay/Manamorphose bans. Life returns to normal.
Finally, I use "likely" and "probably" a lot because I do not have the data to conclusively say TC is not the problem. It is my opinion that burn is the problem, not Cruise or only burn decks with Cruise, but it remains to be seen whether that's true or not. Take this for what you will.
'78 CB750F, '09 CBR600RR
UMMMM Splinter twin says hello.
Twin is more of a combo control deck, i meant pure combo
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Personally I'd rather play against delver than someone spamming bolts at my face all day.
Also, I know this has been mentioned bit it seems to be ignored by many:
Just looking at top 8's doesn't necessarily tell you a deck's win %. If all decks are equal power level but half the field is jamming delver, you would expect to see ~4 delver decks in the top 8. You see this in Legacy a lot with decks like Lands and Painter where they have really high win % but they aren't played as much so they don't place as often. Part of the reason is simply the cost of the decks. Most people I know who play legacy already have blue duals, FoW, etc., so yeah, I'd rather just jam delver. Something similar may be going on in modern (people buying in to Delver/Burn rather than shelling out for BGx). I mean is it possible that really Zoo is completely broken right now we just aren't seeing as many top 8's because of prevalence?
I could be wrong but I don't think we have the data to really say either way just yet. Banning for prevalence due to power level (which would likely correlate with win %) is one thing. Banning for prevalence due to cost seems a bit shady to me.
1. I don't think Wizards cares what the win % is. They just care if the deck has prevalence past a certain point. Reference BBE Jund and DRS BGx Midrange, both of which had win rates at probably around (or just over) 50%, but had metagame shares at 25-30% and 20-25% respectively. At least, that's all we can infer from the public ban announcements. So it won't matter if Delver/Burn has a win rate of 50% if it is actually sending 4 decks to every T8. That's still too much Delver/Burn for Wizards, and too much for the average Modern player.
2. Even if we had the win rates, which would probably be close to 50%, that still wouldn't tell us much about the deck's actual power unless it was really, insanely broken. A lot of inexperienced and bad players will jump on the hype train and play the deck anyway, which will skew that win rate down. So maybe the guys who made T8 had unstoppable 90% win percentages. But then a bunch of guys kind of scrub out at 20%, and many others just meander along at ~50%. That's another reason why raw prevalence, not just win rate, is rightfully more important. At least, barring some insanely detailed analysis which I am sure Wizards does not conduct.
3. Before KTK, Burn really wasn't that out of control. It never got over that "magical" 13% marker on MTGO, which is where many other tier 1 decks of the format has been at least once (Melira Pod, UR Twin, UWR Control, and Affinity). And it was totally fine in paper. It's only the decks that exceed that (Jund and BGx Midrange w/ DRS) which cause problems, and we have no idea if Burn was going to surpass that point. Many decks do not. Some do.
4. At the very least, a TC ban would likely increase the number of BGx Midrange decks, which are right now at historic lows at sub 2%. Between MS and TC, it is pretty clear which of the two is really murdering those poor BGx decks. I mean, BGx Midrange is supposed to thrive in the Delver matchup! It was something that kept Delver down for years. And suddenly, Delver is everywhere and BGx midrange can't do drap. TC is the likeliest culprit of that, or at least the disproportionate cause of it relative to MS or other cards in the deck. Don't get me wrong; I don't like those BGx decks much more than most people. But one card shouldn't render them extinct.
Scapeshift runs Dig Through Time. Cantrips + Ramp are easy enough to pitch into the GY.