Spoiler Highlight: Delney, Streetwise Lookout in Standard & Pioneer

The second day of previews for the new Magic expansion, Murders at Karlov Manor, set the community abuzz with the latest legendary and mythic-rare revealed, Delney, Streetwise Lookout.

With abilities reminiscent of Panharmonicon while interacting with cards similarly to Welcoming Vampire and others that care about the power of creatures, Delney has received a lot of attention on social media, where speculation about their potential in the most various formats took over.

In this article, we delve deeper into the new legend under the scope of Standard and Pioneer, to determine whether the card has enough potential to define archetypes and change the competitive Metagame in 2024!

In a vacuum, Delney, Streetwise Lookout fits into a card pattern already known in Magic, the famous three-drop that seeks to benefit strategies aimed at small creatures, known as Weenies.

While most supports for this strategy aim to act in the form of an active card advantage, drawing cards or bringing creatures back to the battlefield, Delney brings a new approach by doubling triggered abilities of these creatures, causing their value to be doubled, but without offering any value on its own.

In this sense, the new creature interacts better with ETB effects, especially those that interact with the battlefield and/or with your opponents' hands.

In addition to these, creatures with abilities that trigger when they attack, or when players take some action in the game are also excellent alongside the new card.

Delney's other ability helps ensure that they are not blocked or, at the very least, that trades between them are favorable or equal. However, this also presents itself as a problem when it negatively affects power boosts, such as interactions between Humans, where they could stand out alongside Thalia’s Lieutenant.

Therefore, while doubling the effectiveness of all ETB effects and triggers on small creatures, Delney, Streetwise Lookout requires some heavy deckbuilding concessions, especially the need to keep the creatures at low power, giving up great staples like Wedding Announcement or typical supports with Humans and other creature types.

Standard has a significant number of creatures that Delney's ability can benefit from.

In Esper or Azorius variants, cards like Preacher of the Schism, Werefox Bodyguard, Faerie Mastermind, Sanguine Evangelist and Deep-Cavern Bat offer the most powerful interactions with Delney, where their triggered abilities create snowball effects if they stay in play for more than one turn. Raffine, Scheming Seer is another card whose interaction between the two is interesting, but eventually leads to the point where it makes Delney's first ability unfeasible.

But there are two problems with including the new creature in these archetypes: the notorious excess of value three-drops that these decks already have and which Delney cannot compete with because their immediate value is null, and the fact that Wedding Announcement and Virtue of Loyalty are two staples in Midrange lists and interact negatively with the new card by increasing the power of your creatures.

Perhaps, Delney will gain space as a payoff in lists with cheaper threats that benefit from both of its abilities while not having higher mana costs, seeking to delay the opponent's plays while establishing pressure and value with its key card.

Another powerful interaction of the new card is found on a Toxic shell, where most creatures have one power. While Delney doesn't Toxic instances, as it is a static ability, effects like Venerated Rotpriest are triggered, granting an extra poison counter whenever a creature you control is the target of a spell or ability.

Toxic decks have been gaining popularity in Standard in recent weeks, with the value-oriented Mono White version and the synergy-focused Bant version growing in competitive events. Soon, this could become another - and perhaps the best - home for this new card.

It is also worth highlighting Delney's interaction with the expansion's new disguise ability, whose face-down creature is a 2/2 with Ward . Because of the way ward triggers, Delney doubles the protection given to it, making opponents need to pay to use any spell or ability against the face-down card. This is important to ensure the effectiveness of already revealed potential staples, such as Aurelia’s Vindicator.

Pioneer has its own range of powerful ETB effects attached to creatures with power two or less, and a significant portion of them fit into mana values less than or equal to three, making Delney, Streetwise Lookout a great payoff to risk new versions of Collected Company decks.

The list above seeks to extract maximum value from the new creature with several powerful drops already known from Company lists, such as Voice of Resurgence and Skyclave Apparition. Furthermore, we avoid any means of amplifying the power of our creatures, focusing on synergy and added value as the main means of gaining space to pressure the opponent.

Kellan, Daring Traveler and Charming Prince generate absurd values alongside Delney, in addition to having excellent synergy between them.

If we add a splash, the range of viable creatures for this approach becomes even wider, with Reflector Mage and Spell Queller in blue, Inti, Seneschal of the Sun in red and Preacher of the Schism and Deep-Cavern Bat in black.

However, just like in Standard, Delney offers very little on its own, which greatly limits its viability in Pioneer. Furthermore, Selesnya Company is currently in the lower tiers, given both its inability to deal with the Amalia Combo, and the fact that Amalia grants a more appropriate option for the format as it has a “free-win button”, where we use Collected Company to find Amalia Benavides Aguirre and Wildgrowth Walker.

Therefore, while it has good potential, the homes for this new creature still face a crisis and Delney doesn't do enough to leverage these archetypes back into the competitive Metagame.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks for reading!