Tutor, Draw, and Manipulate.
When I'm building a deck, you can be sure that I'm going to consider all of these things. So, when I was reworking Lazav, I started making lists. It's easy to get carried away in the list-making portion of the deck-building process. I had dozens of Draw cards all fighting to get into the final deck, but none fighting as hard as the two newcomers from Khans of Tarkir.
Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time.
Both of these spells have been having their way with the various formats. Legacy, Modern, and even Vintage, have been testing them out. As it turns out, refilling your hand with cards for little mana is good. Who knew?
For the Commander format, in general, I don't like spending turns "doing nothing," even if it means that I get to draw a lot of cards. There are too many crucial turns where tapping out means that you miss all the action. However, refilling your hand is super important. With that said, here are my general rules for card drawing:
1) Instant speed is better than sorcery speed.
2) Things get dicey at about five mana.
2) I don't like "conditional" cards.
Okay, let's look at Treasure Cruise.
It's three cards for a single blue mana, if you can delve away seven cards from your graveyard. It's also Sorcery speed. The obvious comparison is to Ancestral Recall, except well, it's not Ancestral Recall at all, is it?
Ancestral Recall is broken. As an unconditional, instant speed, three-card-drawing spell for a single blue mana with no drawback or other requirements, it's not a fair comparison.
A better comparison is probably Concentrate or Brilliant Plan. Both spells are also blue Sorceries that draw three cards. Concentrate is four mana, two of which are blue. Brilliant Plan is five mana, but only one of which is blue. In other words, you're going to pay four or five mana to get three cards at sorcery speed with no other conditions or requirements. But, to get three cards with Treasure Cruise for the same cost, there's a condition. We have to do something extra.
If Treasure Cruise was simply a spell that allowed you to draw three cards for eight mana, it wouldn't be very good. Concentrate or Brilliant Plan would be objectively better. But! Throw delve into the mix, and we have something else entirely.
To make Treasure Cruise the same as Brilliant Plan, you need to pay five mana AND delve away three cards. To make it similar to Concentrate, you need to delve four cards.
So, Treasure Cruise is "better" when you have cards in your graveyard that you also don't mind removing from the game. This is rarely true for me. I like reusing things from my graveyard. I also don't like being at the mercy of someone who randomly throws out a Relic of Progenitus and catches me in the crossfire. Topdecking an eight mana draw spell sounds like a depressing way to lose.
Visions of Beyond is an instant speed draw spell with the potential of drawing three cards for a single blue mana. The condition is that a graveyard has to have twenty or more cards in it. If the condition isn't met, it still replaces itself by drawing one card instead. And, let's not forget that we are talking instant speed here. All this, and I still don't run Visions of Beyond as a draw spell - even in a deck with milling.
Dig Through Time
Dig Through Time isn't exactly a Draw spell, but it does leave you up one card since you put two in your hand. It's more of a Manipulate spell, except that it reaches deeper into your library than most. Not quite as far as a true Tutor, though. Before we go on, take a moment to scope out the sweet artwork on this card.
At a whopping eight mana without delve, Dig Through Time would be tough to justify. For the same mana, you could simply draw five cards off the top with Stroke of Genius, for example. But, like Treasure Cruise, throw delve into the mix and we have something else entirely.
The closest comparison is probably Impulse. Dig Through Time is like a double-Impulse, in a way. If you can delve four cards when you cast it, bringing the casting cost down to four mana, you would almost get a double-Impulse, except you would see one less card since you look at the top seven instead of eight. The question for me, then, is when would I rather have Dig Through Time than just running Impulse?
Almost never.
Impulse isn't conditional. It's also technically easier to splash or play off of a colorless mana source. Although it only gets me one card and only digs four cards deep, it's much further down the curve to cast, doesn't eat cards from my graveyard, isn't a terrible topdeck at any point in the game, and isn't vulnerable to random acts of graveyard hate. All this, and I'm still not running Impulse in my Lazav deck.
But wait, mister! I thought Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are burning up the formats, even Commander?!
There's getting the job done and than there's going over the top. Every time I've been in a game where these spells are cast, the other spells I mentioned would have worked just as well. There are cases where using delve to reduce the casting cost of these spells lead to a stronger turn. There are just as many - and possibly more - cases where not having the cards to delve away make for a much weaker turn.
But which turns do we tend to remember and value? The ones where we did something spectacular? Or the ones where we did nothing?
I guess what I'm saying is that Fact or Fiction costs $0.50, is an instant, and typically gives you back three cards for four mana. If you need to break the table open, it's easy to ask one of the other stuck opponents to make the split. I end up with five card piles this way a lot of the time. And, the "drawback" of losing some of the cards to your graveyard is easy to build around. Putting cards into your graveyard to use later is much easier than taking cards out of your graveyard to never use again.
We have most of the best spells from the history of Magic at our disposal. By all means, if Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, or any other spell fits the theme of your deck or creates synergy that pushes whatever you are trying to do, run it! But don't forget that there are turns where you do nothing. And doing nothing sucks.
Do less nothing.
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