New banned and restricted list coming next month.

Hi Everyone!

I'm taking a little detour from my regular finance talk to talk about something that has been an ongoing topic of conversation. Will Treasure Cruise get banned in Modern?

The short answer is probably not and here's why. Let's look at the most recent Modern banning, Deathrite Shaman. Wizards cited that the card was good at the beginning, middle, and end of the game. It was good all the time in most situations. It could make mana early, gain life to stay alive and hose any kind of reanimation strategy, and later kill your opponent. Granted Wizards did seem to have a problem with Jund and wanted it not to be a tier 1 deck in Modern (they cited certain bans specifically to weaken Jund). I'd guess the Jund deck in Modern fell as the "most popular deck in the format" and people were tired of seeing Jund all over tournaments. What does this have to do with Treasure Cruise? The point I'm making is that Jund was oppressive and Delver and other Treasure Cruise decks are not, Pod and Twin are still winning tournaments.

How about the comparison to Ancestral Recall. It's not quite even close to ancestral recall. If you drew 3 Ancestral recalls in your opening hand are you happy or sad? If you draw 3 Treasure Cruise, are you as happy? Nope. It's not a card that's good at the beginning of the game, yes you can cast it turn 3, but that usually entails using burn spells and cantrips at a less than optimal capacity. There's one other issue that people don't realize about Treasure Cruise. Your graveyard is a resource...yeah, I know, "but I don't use my graveyard". Most decks that run Treasure Cruise used to (many still do) run Snapcaster Mage. You can't snapcast back a bolt or anything else that was delved away with Treasure Cruise. I'd even bet that many players would go so far as to say that one specific card in your graveyard is worth more than 3 random cards. I'm not saying thats the case all the time, but why do decks with Cruise still play some Snapcasters?

When we go back to the beginning of the game with 3 Ancestral Recalls or 3 Treasure Cruises, you cast Ancestral and it gets countered, it's a 1 for 1 trade, when your Treasure Cruise gets countered, you can't cast the next one because your graveyard is delved away.

I'm not saying Cruise won't get banned for sure, I'm just saying it won't get banned right now.