The week that Bob Huang revealed the absurdity of Treasure Cruise to the world, I began battling with the card in Modern.

Turns out that Cruise is even more powerful relative to the Modern card pool. Seeing as I had access to the deck, my starting point was to adjust a few things in Izzet Delver and invite Treasure Cruise to the party. This is roughly the list that I started on:

I wasn't up to anything fancy with this list. I just added four Ancestral Recall to what was a pretty marginal Modern deck and I started winning.

A lot.

Even when the deck became more popular, my list showed some resiliency due to access to Mana Leak and not playing low impact cards like Spell Pierce, instead respecting the ability of access to amazing card advantage to carry me into the late game.

The largest hurdle for this deck has been combating Electrolyze. Taking a turn to set up Young Pyromancer and making a token only to get wrecked is a real bad time. It's particularly troublesome that the two most popular combo decks in the format have access to Electrolyze, as conserving Negates is of utmost importance against Scapeshift and Splinter Twin.

Immanuel Gerschenson had a pretty elegant solution to this problem that I'm sure helped him win GP Madrid. Tarmogoyf doesn't die to Electrolyze.

It's also not for nothing that Tarmogoyf represents a serious clock against Modern combo decks--one that can freely attack into Deceiver Exarchs at that. The extra color can make you weaker to burn decks, though Tarmogoyf is pretty resilient and powerful against them as well.

While I admire the elegance of the Tarmogoyf solution, I'm inclined to believe that there may be a better option. There is almost assuredly an option that is easier on the wallet as well. The glaring flaw with the Tarmogoyf splash is that it doesn't add much of any significance to the sideboard. Ancient Grudge is seldom more powerful than Hurkyl's Recall as a sideboard option. Destructive Revelry is a powerful option with good flexibility, though I do wonder how it compares to Wear//Tear.

Another interesting point is that Tarmogoyf doesn't really change how the deck plays out. We're still just trying to beat down. Something like an uptick in Path to Exile and/or Terminates make the addition of Tarmogoyf in our deck pretty negligible. It can also be quite difficult to beat a Flame Slash in the early game.

With Burn and sweepers being quite popular in Modern, I can't help but feel that Lightning Helix might benefit the deck more. I was interested in trying Lightning Helix months back, though Jeskai Delver's weakness to Blood Moon struck me as problematic.

Flooded Strand changes this. Once I'm on board with Helix and I'm weary of Electrolyze, I'm thinking that I'm more into Snapcaster Mage than Young Pyromancer. This is the starting 60 that I've begun testing:

On the note of Flooded Strand, it's the fetchand that I expect to appreciate the most quickly after the Khanslaught fetches reach their low points. Decks like this, Jeskai Control and the Jeskai Splinter Twin list that LSV posted a video of last week are real forces in Modern, and Jeskai Stoneblade/Miracles are here to say in Legacy. Blue fetches are just better and white mana has been much more relevant than black mana as of late.

If you had to speculate on just one fetchland, I would make it Flooded Strand.

The maindeck doesn't really look like much. This is a three-color burn deck with some access to card advantage and a little permission. We sacrifice wins where Young Pyromancer would be amazing while we win more games where Electroylze would normally wreck us. The real incentive of the white splash comes from our sideboarding options though. Wear//Tear, Stony Silence and Path to Exile are likely candidates, and there's certainly some argument to maindecking some number of Path's as well.

The real draw is something much more subtle. Transitioning away from Young Pyromancer means that Delver of Secrets and Monastery Swiftspear are the only cards marked for aggressive decks in our maindeck. With some smart sideboard selections, this means we can sideboard into a strategically different deck depending on what we see our problematic matchups as. There are a ton of options available to us. There are exciting cards like Keranos, God of Storms and Vedalken Shackles that we can make work, though most of our slots will definitely need to be "safe" options that we can bring in in multiple matchups.

First and foremost, we need permission. Not dying is the prerogative for non-combo decks and counterspells help us achieve this goal. More importantly, counterspells will be good whether we're boarding out Lightning Helix or our creatures. We want them against a lot of people. Dispel, Negate and Counterflux have all been very powerful for me in all of my Modern experience, and I don't see not playing any of them.

We'll also need more removal. Seeing as we'll probably continue to be a Mana Leak deck no matter how we sideboard, I like Magma Spray more than Path to Exile, though we likely want access to both. Though notably Combust kills most of the things that we actively want to Path without being Dispel-able against Twin. I could easily see dedicating four slots or more to removal, and I imagine we'll want a mix of all of these cards and likely an Electrickery to help against Young Pyromancer decks.

We'll also need some artifact/enchantment hate. Stony Silence has lost some value with the advent of Ensoul Artifact, and we're already good against Tron, seeing as we're a Delver deck. This inclines me to believe that Wear//Tear is our best option, as it will help us beat things like Blue Moon and Bogles as well.

Lastly, we'll just want to fill our deck out with some outright hateful cards. I'm uncertain how the Burn matchup plays out and I fully expect it to be a popular one. I like going for broke with Kor Firewalker, with this slot being subject to the most scrutiny depending on what is perceived to be needed as testing progresses and how good the Burn matchup feels without out.

As a starting point, this is the sideboard that I would test:

The sideboard is by far the most experimental part of the list, though I could see several slots in the main and side shifting.

I'll be testing this list as well as a number of other Delver lists in preparation of GP Omaha, as I see playing a deck like this that I'm most comfortable with as my best shot at success. There are obviously elements of the deck that are very powerful and finding the best way to tune them both in terms of the deck's own strategy as well as its position in the metagame should poise me well for success.

That is, assuming nothing from the deck gets banned first. Grand Prix Madrid's results make this seem unlikely, but you never know.

Thoughts on the deck or sideboard? Think I should just jam Goyfs or eschew a third color altogether? Wondering if I've just forgotten about black? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading.
-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter