Greetings everyone ,
the Archon Council decided to put a change to the vote. You can vote on the following change:
Unban Treasure Cruise
You can had over to our Discord to cast your vote! You have time to do so until 15-Jul-2023 12:00 CEST.
Here are the reasoning for the proposed change:
Treasure Cruise was banned in Legacy and Modern shortly after its release and restricted in Vintage. It also faced a swift ban in 1-on-1 Commander formats for the same reasons as in Legacy, Modern, and Vintage: the card provided too much card advantage for a low mana cost. At that time, graveyard resources were not as actively utilized, and fetchlands were freely accessible especially in 60-card formats. However, significant changes have occurred over the past nine years. Pure card advantage is less relevant in Commander formats than in traditional ones. Moreover, when comparing Treasure Cruise to cards like Expressive Iteration or Light up the Stage, it becomes evident that the latter two are entirely unproblematic in our format. Therefore, it can be concluded that Treasure Cruise should no longer remain banned.
Additionally, tests were conducted to assess the feasibility of playing Treasure Cruise for 1 mana. It was found that in a significant portion of these games, around 30%, the opportunity to play Treasure Cruise for a reduced mana cost of 1 or 2 was present. Among those games, the wish to cast Treasure Cruise arose in approximately 40% of such instances. This indicates that in approximately 12% of the games, both the opportunity and desire to play Treasure Cruise were aligned.
The average turn in which Treasure Cruise was played in these tests was typically around turn 5. While certain decks may achieve this earlier by playing cards like Mental Note, pursuing a one-time card advantage effect does not appear to be overly dominant.
Based on these observations and test results, we recommended that the ban on Treasure Cruise should be lifted, particularly when considering the diminishing significance of pure card advantage in Archon (or 1v1 Commander) formats since the initial ban on Treasure Cruise.