You might be looking at this table exclusively:Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght
p(drawing 1 or more 4-of after n cards):
7: 40%
8: 44%
10: 53%
13: 63%
p(drawing 1 or more 2-of after n cards):
7: 22%
8: 25%
10: 31%
13: 39%
And then going: "Well, a 2-of shows up 56% of the time in your starting hand if you have it by 13 cards whereas a 4-of shows up 63% of the time in your starting hand if you have it by 13 cards, therefore, if a card is good early, to maximize the probability of getting it early and minimize the probability of topdecking it, you should run four copies." It's not even much of a difference.
That makes some superficial sense, but if you ask yourself why the function is so much more concave down for 4-cards than for 2-cards, you'll get that the cause is DRAWING MULTIPLES.
Let's look at the expected number of cards drawn:
For a 4-of:
7 cards: 0.47
8 cards: 0.53
10 cards: 0.67
13 cards: 0.87
For a 2-of:
7 cards: 0.23
8 cards: 0.27
10 cards: 0.33
13 cards: 0.43
So now let's look at the probability of having a multiple (subtract one from the other, it technically gives you the probability of having a multiple * the number of extra cards for that given multiple):
4-of:
7: 7%
8: 9%
10: 14%
13: 24%
2-of:
7: 1%
8: 2%
10: 2%
13: 4%
If you look at a 4-of, you gain an extra 18% chance to open with it, but you also "gain" a 20% of seeing a second one by 13 cards (turn 5-6 without Brainstorms or AVs). For our deck (and you'd definitely agree if you played it a few times), you'd much rather not have a Vial at all than a second Vial. Goblins goes apeshit with two Vials (Matron for Ringleader, Ringleader finding Matron....), and actually wants 2 or even 3, but we can very very rarely make any use of a second Vial.
One other thing you might note is that Merfolk and Goblins have a distinctive endgame where Vial becomes irrelevant. Vial is never as strong a card in our deck as it is in Merfolk (and certainly not as strong as it is in Goblins), but it also very rarely turns to crap late-game like it does in those decks. Most of the time you'll be using Brainstorm to shuffle away extra lands and between the bounce effects and wastelands, even by turn 10 or 12, you might still only have 3-5 lands in play, so Vial will still allow you to spend mana on Jitte.
Relative to Merfolks and Goblins (and others you mentioned), we: 1) Don't care as much about getting Vial. 2) Hate to see multiple copies. 3) Don’t mind seeing it late, provided it's the first one.
But even if we wanted four Vials, we'd have to cut into our creature base to do it. That obviously cramps Vial’s power.
You summed it up well, actually:We don't get nearly as good use out of it as those lists. In those lists, they downright ABUSE Vial. Vial is the best card in those decks. For us, it's only a good card.I feel like this deck doesn't get as good use out of Aether Vial as some lists where it's classically awesome (like Goblins, Merfolk, Slivers, Affinity, etc.)
Again, it's not as effective in our deck as it would be in, say, Merfolk. That's why we run 2 instead of 4, but I'll go with the comparison. I'll just use Finn's list as an example:You run a few creatures which just don't work well with Aether Vial: I'm assuming you're rarely going to want to vial in a Fathom Seer, and Court Hussar just gives you a Ponder and dies if you use Vial on him. Maybe it seems insignificant, but that's already a full 25% of the creatures that you use and they're basically wearing t-shirts that say "Please don't play me off of Aether Vial."
20 Vialable targets. 4 at 1cc, 8 at 2cc, and 8 at 3cc. Vial represents a trick with Standstill, and to a lesser extent with Lords in the red zone or against decks with burn removal (if you have two lords already in play). It's also a trick on defense.
NoGoyf has:
15 Vialable targets. 8 at 1cc, 7 at 2cc, plus 4 Fathom Seers which can come in theoretically, and ticking Vial to 3 to get the instant-sac on Hussar. So at any fixed value, it’s about equal in effectiveness. It represents a sizeable trick with almost creature, AND we're always on defense.
Vialing in Mom endstep protects it from removal if your opponent taps out.
Vialing in Wayfarer endstep prevents them from holding land or digging basics in anticipation of wastelock. It also allows you to stay on one land. It's about as much of a trick for us as Standstill is for Merfolk.
Vialing in Knight should be fairly obvious, it's much easier to proc it if you can use fetchlands and it's a surprise. It also puts the land into play immediately.
Vialing Grunt endstep allows you to kill a lot of yard cards you wouldn't normally be able to.
Vialing in Avenger or Grunt or Knight are pretty big combat tricks. Note that they're singularly larger than any Merfolk, allowing plays like killing 3/4 Goyfs, Kird Apes, Nacatl's, etc. With an empty board (or even a no-lord board), Nacatl swing or Kird Ape swing are both obviously safe plays against Merfolk even without burn backup, but swinging into a Vial at 2 carries legitimate risks.
The first Vial is always pretty good. It represents two much-less useful lands and all those different tricks. The sum of the tricks and the land is generally worth more than a card. The second Vial doesn't really provide any new tricks, and the land is even less useful, making it a piece of shit to be avoided at all costs.
If you get outside the Legacy world, into Vintage, it’s very standard to see decks running 17 or 18 blue spells making clutch must-force plays on turn 1. All the blue spells we do run draw more blue spells (except Daze). I’ve only had problems of running out of blue against discard, but usually if they have something they want to resolve, they’ll pull the Force first anyway.*You're still cutting it pretty close on the amount of blue spells you have to be able to pitch to Force of Will. If it's working consistently, great, but I'd be a little nervous only playing 18 blue spells, since that's 18 including the 4 FoW.
Combo exists. It’s used exclusively against combo, exclusively to tutor up combo hate. Mainly what it does is it stretches any type of hate we have into pulling double duty against multiple decks, and gives us more outs against pithing needle.*Enlightened Tutor out of the sideboard is giving me a real case of the "wtf's". Why is this in there again?
With the Enlightened Tutor slots, the 2x Thorn of Amethyst is almost as good as 4x Thorn of Amethyst, but then Enlightened Tutor also lets us bring in more “copies” of Relic and Crypt against Ichorid. We get almost the same board strength against Ichorid and Storm combo as would take 9 slots and it only costs us 7, leaving us more room to board against other decks. Unlike a lot of the deck, it’s actually accepted into the cannon of board strategies. See Gabriel Nassif’s GP Chicago list. Enlightened Tutor makes an appearance in the board to snag Relic, Crypt, and Planar Void against Ichorid, Energy Flux against Affinity and Stax, and Engineered Plague against Tribal.
Very, very well. Mainly the mana can be used to cast Jitte or as general card advantage. Even if we can’t use the tempo, at all, it saves us from having to make a land drop, so after a Brainstorm it gives us +1 card.*Knight of the White Orchid seems like a bit of a strange fit. Since your curve is so low, you don't really gain all that much with the pseudo-acceleration besides just deck-thinning. How has he been working out?
Merfolk actually runs a very similar curve. We have 5 three-drops and they usually have 8 or 9. We have 3 Jitte which is somewhere between 2 and 4cc.
Send a screenie of your Match History to prove 80% tournament win ratio (~95% match win), please, especially if you're going to troll just because you think 60% is too much.
"3:2 favorite? Way too much. But I know I'm a 19:1 favorite when I play."
I like wayfarer, stifle, daze and wasteland working together, but grunt and goyf isn't gonna fly. They eat each other's food.lands//18
4 wasteland
2 windswept heath
2 misty rainforest
2 flooded strand
4 tundra
3 tropical island
1 island
creatures//13
4 tarmogoyf
4 weathered wayferer
2 trygon predator
3 jotan grunt
spells//29
4 force of will
4 daze
4 stifle
4 brainstorm
4 swords to plowshares
4 ponder
2 umezawa's jitte (if you still want it... it can be spell snare)
3 flex spot... whatever you want
@ Forbiddian- I just love the fact that you decide to attack me instead of adress the points I make about this pile... I think it's because I'm pretty much right...
As for grunt and goyf... They can coexist, as with the cantrips and entire manadenial plan, there is plenty of 'food' to go around... Besides, grunt is a supplementary beater, he's there when you just need more pressure for just a few turns... As big of beaters that grunt and goyf are, they only need a few turns anyways... Grunt also has synergy with the wyferer don't you forget :)
as for the jitte spot, I don't think it can fit happily in the list (mine)... Probably would need to be snares or something.
Ok, you've sort of sold me on Knight of the White Orchid and the question of whether FoW is viable...
On the other hand, all that talk didn't really convince me that: A.) this deck needs Aether Vial at all; or B.) if this deck does need Aether Vial, it's correct to play two copies.
The simple point of the matter is that if you draw Vial late-game, even though you say you can still put it to good use, you probably would have been better off drawing something else. Saying "Whatever, I can still use it to save on mana if I draw it late game" kind of assumes that you're already winning that "late game scenario." If your opponent has you on any sort of relevant clock, you're still gonna find that seventh turn Vial to be a dead draw like a motherfucker.
On a different topic, you also didn't mention Ancestral Visions at all... I really don't think it's right for this deck. If I was you, I'd cut Vial and Visions and add in some more utility spells or creatures. You know, just test it. See if you still have that cherished "60% against the entire field" without these cards; who knows, maybe there's something better that you could replace them with.
One more thing: Isn't Court Hussar pretty much just better than Fathom Seer?? Sure, he doesn't give +1 card advantage, but he also doesn't require you to bounce your own lands back to your hand (which isn't an advantage in any sense of thinking unless you have a Wayfarer online). And he gives you card quality.
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
What? We addressed your point, and then he ad hominem'd you just for fun, and then you say "You only attacked me so I win."
If goyf were on color, we'd play it even despite the antisynergy with grunt. But we're not going to stretch our mana base thinner (We win a lot of games off of consistency) in order to accomodate a 2 mana for a 4/5, at best. (We don't even have a reliable way to put sorcery in the graveyard.)
And yeah, 19:1 favorite is ridiculous. What are you rated? I think I'm about 1850, and certainly no less than 1800, and yet I would say in a game of magic I'm on average a 3:1 favorite, maybe even slightly less. Obviously, if I play against more skilled players, it's even lower. But then you, sir, are a 19:1 favorite. Do you play against children? I don't even think pros vs. normal players would be a 19:1 favorite, let alone you versus normal players.
I again address the issue with vial, but this time much more briefly than before. Many functions in elementary calculus have local mins/maxes, even global mins/maxes. When you actually write out a computation, any reasonable model will show that the maximum utility per card does not always exist at 0, 4. (At 0 it'd be ill-defined, perhaps it'd be better to use another metric, but you get the point.) Actually, vial is one of those cards for all the reasons stated before. (Matt's post, as well as many posts earlier in this thread.)
As far as Aether Vial, I'm paying attention to all y'all's mathematical arguments and everything, and yeah, I got the pm accusing me of not testing the list and you're right I haven't been playing Magic much recently.
But I'm addressing this from a common-sense perspective, and you haven't provided me with any common-sense counter-arguments. You basically just show me a flow-chart of statistics and say "We like drawing Aether Vial about this often, and it doesn't really matter when." On the other hand, here's paraphrasing some of you two guys' own comments about Vial in this deck: Aether Vial is unimportant to your overall strategy, and you can win without it, and you'd rather draw a Squire than a second Aether Vial, and yadda yadda... Well, then it sounds like it's probably not really a card that you need to include in your list, is it? Y'all really haven't done much to convince me that this deck really intrinsically wants to play the first copy of Aether Vial that it draws.
It seems to me like, in this deck, Aether Vial basically just lets you play the same creatures you were going to play already, at pretty much the same rate of speed you were already going to play them at (ok, marginally quicker if you have a creature-heavy draw.) It just doesn't seem necessary. I'll leave the whole subject alone completely if y'all just give me the assurance that you've tested the list without Aether Vial and with four Aether Vial, and you're happiest just splitting the difference. And next time I play MWS I'll test this list, but that's gonna have to be on a friend's pc so it may be a while from now.
PS: I'm really not trying to increase the flame count around here, I swear. But Ancestral Visions still seems like a poor choice, especially at two copies.
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
We've tested it. We've tested every number of Vials, from 0-4. When we run more than 2, the creature count drops too much and we're never happy seeing Vial, and especially the second Vial. There's not much difference between 1 Vial and 2 Vials in terms of the situations when you do see Vial. That change would probably be -1 Vial, +1 Serra Avenger.
To spell out a proof of our claims would require math, but to simply explain some concepts can be done at a pretty accessible level. Basically I too used to subscribe to the incorrect logic that all things are either good enough (deserving of 4 copies) or not good enough (deserving of 0 copies.) When I began magic at the age of 12 (I'm now 20) and possibly a bit into my 2nd and maybe even 3rd year I subscribed to this reasoning. One day it hit me that with each card comes a certain amount of negative utility for the redundancy and a certain amount of positive utility, and that it's quite possible for the negative utility to vary differently than the positive utility. As common sense informs you, decision making is naturally marginal, and the marginal decision is at the 2nd vial, we decide to stop including more. To see why this is you'd actually have to do a computation. I think the catch phrase for this is "diminishing returns."
Dude, I never said all cards have to be a four-of. What I'm implying is that what determines the number you should use of any given card, is how often you want or need to see that card in any average game. This is mitigated by factors such as the card really only being useful if you draw it in your opening hand. No one plays Stax with two fucking copies of Chalice of the Void.
Nor did I really need some sort of biography of your rise from naive ignorance (which is kinda where you imply I'm at) to supreme enlightenment (which is kinda where you imply you're at) as a Magic player.
All I'm saying is that a card that you fundamentally want to play on your first turn should pretty much be a four-of if you want to use it. And besides that, in a deck with a curve as low as this, and this many cantrips to ensure getting your mana you need, I really don't see the need for Aether Vial. You already have plenty of other ways to consistently play lands, and your curve is low enough that you don't really need to cheat on mana. I'll test it when I get a chance and see how it plays out (when I draw it.)
Anyways, I'm done with that argument. Really. Finished.
Can y'all explain the reasoning behind using Ancestral Visions? And also why two copies is the right number for it? Y'all literally have not defended this choice at all and we're on to like over half a page of Aether Vial argument.
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
In my testing I have to say Ancestral Visions has been meh. In the aggro matchups it has been dank. In almost every situation I have preferred Standstill. I mean, you run Vial so there is some synth between vial and standstill, and you can get a winning board position in a really short amount of time. I think standstill is the best way to refill your hand. Once you get a board position that you can win under, your opponent has to break it. Have you tested it?Can y'all explain the reasoning behind using Ancestral Visions? And also why two copies is the right number for it? Y'all literally have not defended this choice at all and we're on to like over half a page of Aether Vial argument.
Also, Visions has been completely dead against Landstill. A few days ago I played against a guy from the source (J.V. was his name I think). My ancestral visions just turned into the spell that broke the standstills he kept pulling from SDT. How do you beat landstill? He stabilized every time (one time at 1 life!) and then played the RW Ajani, which I basically had no answer for. I mean the matchup was very close (fun too) but he gained the upper hand (I think I won game 2, but lost the 1 and 3). The draw spells just didn't cut it. I think if i resolved Standstill when I had the winning board position, that would have made the game in a few of the games.
I love the synergy between grunt and wayfarer. Sure goyf and grunt could co-exist but I would much rather draw 2 grunt then 2 goyf or a goyf and a grunt. Grunt is just bomb in so many matchups, namely in making goyfs smaller and in doing so you weaken your own offense. I think its safer to leave goyf out and play anti-goyf grunts. That might just be my preference but either way is green really worth the splash? It would be difficult to support with 18 lands, 4 of them being wastes. Also, in your list, FTA, wouldnt you want at least a singleton savannah? Wayfarer can work as a mana fixer if you aren't drawing the greens. I'd run at least one.As for grunt and goyf... They can coexist, as with the cantrips and entire manadenial plan, there is plenty of 'food' to go around... Besides, grunt is a supplementary beater, he's there when you just need more pressure for just a few turns... As big of beaters that grunt and goyf are, they only need a few turns anyways... Grunt also has synergy with the wyferer don't you forget :)
Matt and I are considering cutting the remaining visions. But if we cut visions it will be because we believe they are not good cards in general. There's no way for visions to work in any decks, but not this one, because our deck is maximally designed to take advantage of "waiting" cards. We have many time walks: wasteland, daze, wayfarer. Many more stalling cards like swords, mom, grunt. If we don't run visions, then I don't see how any other deck could run visions unless they are trying to combo it into play with tricks or something. We have not tested standstill, although I have thought about it. It may be worth looking into this but we have no game under standstill. We can: play one of our two vials, and that's about it. We don't get any advantages when the board state freezes over a few turns. We don't have the lands to make the drop every turn if we're not playing spells that return lands. Additionally, you may notice that we have trouble casting things conveniently on turn 2. It's normally undesirable to cast knight, jitte, grunt, and avenger is not allowed. Also, our 1 casting cost spells are the most broken in the format; it's nice to drop 2 of these on turn 2, or even just 1 of these saving a fetchland so that wayfarer can trick a wasteland out. During the lategame, when AV can no longer be used, it can be FOW'd or brainstormed away. FOW naturally favors cards that are conditional to some extent for the obvious generalization of the above reason.
We beat standstill by wastelocking them. I have most recently lost an entire match to some guy on mws playing a really slow control deck that even had nonbasics, because he was only interested in playing mass removal spells and card draw, with loam tricks. Yeah, when this happens, it's going to be an uphill battle. This might even be a negative matchup. (Although it doesn't matter cause these builds lose to everything else.) If they at all convert their mass removal into targetted removal or try to run useless crap like elspeth/counterspell, targetted removal, then you'll have a massive advantage. The reason is essentially that every mass removal is about a 2:1 on average, so good enough that if they run anything less than a deck dedicated to sniping slow control decks with creatures, they will lose, but that they can actually win if they dedicate their deck to beating our type of deck.
Also, for future reference, nobody should expect to be convinced by an argument that is inherently mathematical when asking for a nonmathematical justification. In fact, I found it silly to argue without math, but since it was requested I obliged.
Actually, he didn't adress any of my actual points about the deck, he simply ignored it.
Your guy's list simply cannot end the game quickly enough, splashing green would simply make it better in every sense of the word.
Wait... you do know what dank means, right? Your post is pretty confusing, because you said that it's dank against aggro, but that you'd prefer Standstill.
Actually, Ancestral Visions is so much better than Standstill in our deck that I'm a little bit surprised it has never been discussed in Merfolk.
I understand that Merfolk has more synergies: More Vial, more early board pressure, and manlands, so that might be part of it, but in our deck, the comparison isn't close:
You never have to break your own AV, and it isn't countered by Vial. It's countered by Standstill, Chalice @ 0 (better than Chalice @ 1, believe me), and Counterbalance, but all three of those combined are probably played less often than Vial. You never run into the situation where you have board position, but then your opponent drops a Factory or bolts your 2/2 in response. That's disastrous, because you often have to break your own Standstill in that situation.
AV costs 1 instead of 2. It also can't be dazed, letting you use all your mana for the turn and still ducking Daze.
AV doesn't pump Goyf with Enchantment. Enchantments are extremely hard to get into the yard, so it almost guarantees +1/+1 against any future Tarmogoyfs. We can eat it with Grunt, but Grunt triggers almost exclusively go to the opponent's yard for KotR, Grim Lavamancer, Nimble Mongoose and etc., so Grunting our own yard is much more inconvenient.
AV literally wins the game against any type of black discard strategy, and Standstill doesn't have any matchups where it's as crippling.
There are a lot of other factors why AV is much better than Standstill in our deck (such as how we don't benefit at all from stalling while any decks with more expensive cards benefit a lot).
Yea, in other words, I liked drawing it, preferably early against aggro so it could replenish my hand. I could use it well in that situation. Otherwise, it was the shittiest top deck ever. Most of the time I took control of the board with tricks, removal and countermagic, and then dropped AV. In all of those situations I am saying I would rather have had Standstill. Against control, AV was a terrible topdeck. It just got countered, stifled, or activated my opponents Standstill's into shit that killed me. Maybe I just haven't played this deck as much as you have, but I will tell you that I gained board position in quite a few games, and then if I lost it, standstill over AV would have made all the difference.Wait... you do know what dank means, right? Your post is pretty confusing, because you said that it's dank against aggro, but that you'd prefer Standstill.
I board it out against Landstill, but I like seeing it G1 early. Or you just pitch it to Force or Brainstorm it away. Control is such a rare matchup and it's way in our favor anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about two suboptimal cards G1. And I'm not convinced Standstill is better even against Landstill. Landstill is generally better at abusing our Standstills than we are. It would take a pretty crazy board position advantage (like Wayfarer in play) for me to want to cast a Standstill, since they could recover with DoJ or something.
With only two Vials, you can't just lucksack the lockout every game.
Still up for more games, although I must say it's pretty silly to play if you're just going to complain about luck irrationally. (OMG YOU DREW A 4 of!!!!!!) Or if you're just going to claim afterward that you're a horrible player and don't represent the deck well.
I can't believe to still read this more than 2 years after... How come is it a problem to keep 3 or 4 cards in a graveyard? And Grunt will fill the graveyard by itself too. On the opposite they are complementary because Grunt can't be played early although Goyf is an early beater. Once the opponent has dealt with you goyf copies (or earlier if you feel that you can kill), you can play grunt to seal the deal and/or shrink opponent's goyfs.
With grunt you get to choose if you pay the upkeep or not, you choose which cards you remove from the yard. You have all the control of the situation. Goyf eats no ressource. How can they be dyssynergic?
Yeah we actually don't run goyf because it's not blue or white, and not because of the slight negative interaction with grunt. In fact, if anything the interaction might even be possible when we control it, we'll approximate it with "neutral." But to have a mana base supporting goyf would require adding lands, so even if it's better than the worst card in our deck, it's not better by enough to justify adding it AND 2 savannah, or w/e.
Lately I've beat piceli 4-0 matches (8-0 games) and lost to Green one 1-2 matches (2-6 games) against various builds of Ad Nauseam. I think the massive difference is a fluctuatiuon of luck. Against Piceli I drew fairly well, whereas against green one I mulliganned for mana screw reasons twice and for "hand has no answers in it" like 5 times.
Anyhow, I do acknowledge all results should count independently of draws and such, so it's currently 10-6 since our matchup was called into question.
Actually I suggest other people test this MU if they want to be convinced. It will be hard to do any convincing in the way of the combo matchup since it heavily depends on draws enough. For example, sometimes I open with thorn of amethyst on the play, or on the draw with disruption. (Or they get a slow hand)
Sometimes I mull to 5 or 6. Actually I mulled to 4 against green one and still won, but it was like pretty close to the best conceivable 4, where the best 4 is tundra, wasteland, daze, thorn, and my 4 was wayfarer 2 wasteland thorn.
But it does bring up the point that Thorn is a strong piece of hate, and that it's worth giving up cards for. I.e. Enlightened Tutor is extremely strong, and that NoGoyf can win the game or draw more disruption before the ANT player can answer the Thorn.
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