I'm a fan of 2x Careful Study, the full set not so much, and I am pretty sure 2 gris is adequate.
From my phone. I do my best, dammit!
Went 4-0 at FNM tonight with the following list
4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
3 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons' Torn
1 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
1 Island
9 Fetchlands
sb:
2 Chainz
2 Dread of Night
2 Pithing Needle
2 Serenity
2 Surgical
4 Monastery Mentor
1 Swamp
Jace is definitely interesting in this deck.
Rd1 Miracles (1-0-1)
Played against an older version of the deck, it was UWR with Entreat, Snap, Vclique, and Venser in the main. My early Jace eats a Swords, and I'm staring at Top, a number of lands including Karakas, but she has only a couple cards in hand that weren't blue. I end up getting Griselbrand out through CB, and then end up doing Tendrils for 20 after she flipped Terminus. "I wasn't expecting Tendrils"- when I killed her.
Seeing that I'm up a game, I decide to take a gamble with the Mentor plan (-3 griselbrand, -7 reanimation, -1 emrakul, -2 Entomb, + everything but Dread of Night).
She goes t3 clique in my drawstep, so I brainstorm Mentor to the top, she picks Jace to send to bottom, then I play mentor and get out 3 tokens with some combination of Probe/Ritual/Entomb/Petal. Mentor eats Swords (knew it was there), and we eventually get into turns and the game ends with her at 8, me at 11, and an empty board after a Terminus.
Rd 2 Pox 2-1
G1 I kept the greediest of hands (especially because I knew he was on Pox) 2x Probe, Shallow Grave, 2x Entomb, Dark Ritual, Cabal Therapy. I brick on my draws from Probe, then end up getting there on t4 anyway (He had IoK for Grave, t2 Lily, and t3 Sinkhole).
I board something like -4 Probe +2 Chainz +2 Serenity knowing that he has Leyline.
He ends up starting with Leyline, and I keep a greedy no land 6. He ends up getting it due to 3 Sinkhole and Surgical on Griselbrand. Between g2 and g3, he asks me what creature type Children is (for Engineered Plague). I decide to yolo and go with the mentor plan again.
G3 I draw my opener with Mentor and Therapy (and lands for once), and blind name IoK. It hits, and on t5 I end up sticking the Mentor and winning with it+3 tokens.
Rd 3 Aluren (2-0)
LOL
(Tendrils for 20 g1, The 1-2 Griselbrand-Emrakul Punch g2 on t4 and t3 respectively)
Rd 4 Dredge (2-0) (Sidenote, for those of you following me on twitter, I thought I was going to play against D&T this round. I ended up getting paired down instead).
G1 I find myself in the familiar predicament of needing to find an Entomb. On t2 I had an interesting choice: cast Jace or cast Ponder, with Rit, Therapy, x2 reanimation in hand. Opponent had no board presence, 1 Bridge in GY, 2 Lands, and 2 in hand. I went with Jace, since that's what we were testing for. Next turn I face the second choice: activate Jace with 3 cards in GY, or play fetch and crack, the activate to immediately flip. I went with the flip option, so I could go Draw, Ponder, -3 flashback Ponder. Ended up bricking on finding Entomb. Opponent has an insane turn with Coliseum, and instead of killing me with Dread Return for Flayer, Dread Return for GGT, he points the Flayer at the second Jace I played the turn prior. I rip Ponder and win from there.
g2 I get there pretty quickly with Tendrils.
In total:
Griselbrand+Emrakul Combat damage wins:3
Monastery Mentor wins: 1, 2 if you count that draw (I was going to win that one if it weren't for time being called)
Tendrils wins: 3
As for Jace, I'm unsure of how much I like it. I felt like I played against more fringe decks tonight, and ended up drawing pretty hot as is. At the same time though, Jace makes for a great lightning rod, and one that is likely to stick around if you manage to flip it, which happens pretty quickly.
Pros:
- Cheap
- Bins reanimation targets
- Repeatable draw spell
- Can flashback key spells (fixes Entomb problem)
- Is a wincon on it's own
- Eats Swords, counterspells, discard, and other things that can prevent us from comboing
- Can be targeted by Goryo
- Reanimation can cause it to immediately flip
Cons:
- Slow
- Sometimes you flip Jace and have to +1 into air (not really a problem, since you end up with a planeswalker that is on the board for multiple turns)
- Can make for some awkward interactions with Shallow Grave
I definitely want to get more testing done this week, since I'm not sure if I would run this version over the standard list in a large tournament (like the Legacy Open next weekend that I'm attending).
Since people are going to ask, the Mentor plan was fun. Not sure if removing all of the reanimation stuff was correct, but I was using it as the plan for when I knew my opponents were going to bring in excess hate for GY and storm. I think with Jace, we can reasonably use this as a sideboard option, while still having the other sb cards necessary to beat other decks. Hell, I just took -3 Silence -1 Chain from my 14 card sb and added +4 Mentor +1 Swamp. With a more standard list though, Mentor needs 16 lands to be reliable, so I'm less inclined to recommend it. As mentioned a few pages ago, our deck utilizes card disadvantage to power things out, so Mentor can run out of gas pretty quickly.
Other thoughts on list:
- I missed having Thoughtseize, since I do enjoy being able to disrupt my opponent without having to blind call often. Not sure what can be cut, since I'm unsure if 1 Seize is enough, and 2 cuts hurts the deck too much in this configuration.
- My landbase isn't the best, since I lack a 3rd Underground Sea. I would prefer to have the 3rd Sea over the Scrubland, and then replace the sb Swamp with the Scrubland, since we definitely want 16 lands for the Mentor plan. For fetches, I did 4 Delta, 2 Flats, 3 Flooded. Not sure if that was the correct configuration, but it worked out fine.
- Flusterstorm might be a neat addition to the SB, but I'm unsure what to cut for it, since I feel everything is fairly important.
In short, Jace is neat, but my sample size is small, so I'm reserving judgment until I can jam more games against less fringe decks. Seems good though. Mentor plan is lolz, and I won with it more than I probably should have.
Last edited by Acclimation; 10-17-2015 at 03:25 AM. Reason: cleaned up post, added a few more thoughts
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
Originally Posted by .dk
Cheers RE the cards, I got the 2nd sea this week so figured I'd give it a spin.
RE your comments, they were spot on and I hated this list all day. The lack of ponders hurt so badly. I copied this list http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=91697 but changed out the 3rd sea for a Tundra cause I went up to 2 pull from eternity in the board cause I expected a fair amount of BUG. I will be switching this list to a more traditional 2 GB list with 4 ponders in the next few days.
Edit:
R1 vs UR delver sort of? Weird built with Jitte main deck but no SFM
G1 kept a no lander with a 2x entomb, 2x2 grave petal and brainstorm, got the ritual in the brainstorm and died on like turn 8 after never drawing a land - Think this was super greedy
G2 Kept a 1 lander with thoughtseize, entomb, double shallow grave, GB and show and tell - play the seize, see a double RIP double brainstorm hand, don't draw a land T2, he lands RIP, T3 draw a dual, play it, he wastes it (where the F did that come from) and he's able to ride that to victory as I never get to 3 mana
R2 - Shardless BUG - I loaned this to dude who asked (he made the finals no less)
G1 - I probe him on the play, see double force double blue card, he FoW's my cabal. About 4 turns later I get the GB in the bin and then top deck the Gyro's. I'm under no pressure at all and I decide to cast it as a sudo thoughtseize cause I know he's gonna force it. He does then proceeds to get stuff in play and kill me. Needless to say the next 2 turns I draw running thoughtseize / cabal and would have just won if I was patient
G2 - I decay a T1 DRS, thoughtseize him T2, he top decks a FoW for my T3 grave and then manages to draw another 2 forces in the next 4 turns to shut me down
0-2
R3 - Miracles
G1 - Some stuff happens, he forces some stuff and then gets counter balance online and value entreats for 3 and kills me
G2 - I get GB in the bin T2, he gets counter balance into play his T2, turn 3 I cast petal, he flips land, I cast a ritual he shuffles and blind flips RIP. FUCK! He lands RIP his T3 and in my turn I draw my a blank.... when he lands the top next turn I concede with 4 shallow graves in hand.
0-3
R4 - Elves
G1 - T1 Entomb, T2 grave, 22 points hasty damage
G2 - 1 Lander again and he goes T1 DRS, I go T1 careful study ditching 2 GBs, he does some elves stuff T2, I untap and rip the dark ritual to shallow grave back GB which pretty rapidly leads to 22 points of hasty flying damage.
Interesting thoughts. I realize it's limited sample size - but did you feel that 4 Jace was overkill when you were playing? Do you ALWAYS want one?
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
Hard to tell. I definitely welcomed drawing it. I also drew incredibly well that night, lots of games were short. In Miracles, I loved seeing it, since they have to answer it or watch us flip it into a wincon.
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
Fair enough, more testing needed. Makes sense to start with a 4 of just to see how it performs by drawing it more often. I guess I'm skeptical that you'd want 4 maindeck in the end resulting list, but you're probably right that it's the best way to test it.
Good point about Miracles too - maybe, if it proves to be worth it, there is a 2/2 split between maindeck and sideboard for those matches where you really want another wincon that is difficult to deal with. Or something along those lines anyway.
I'm playing a local event tonight, but I don't own any of them, unfortunately. So needs to be cockatrice or proxy testing for me - neither of which I've had much time for lately. :(
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
Curious - are any of you bringing Tin Fins to GP SeaTac?
I'm wavering between it and Reanimator. I have more experience with Tin Fins, and it's more fun. I've never played an event this size before, and I think the common refrain of "decks like Tin Fins can't sustain an 8+ round run" is starting fester in my mind.
Yep, I'll likely be sacrificing Children in Seattle. And as far as going deep in events... I think there are enough results out there that show that it's possible.
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
I'll see you there. I personally won't be rocking the Finz, but Griz will be the mainstay of my list once again. That's 2 GP's this year. Shweet. Playing some Reanimator. I don't have the LEDs anymore for a transformational sideboard, and I feel that a reactive sideboard is not as good.
From my phone. I do my best, dammit!
Well, let's break this down even further on paper
Opportunity cost of Jace
+4 Jace
+1 Land
+1 Griselbrand
-2 LDV
-1 Reanimate
-1 Chrome Mox
-2 (3) Thoughtseize
The (3) since I ran 61 cards mainboard in my stock list.
Since we have 4 Jace, we want 1 more Gdaddy since we'll have a source that allows us to more easily bin him. Because we want to also be able to reliably cast a 2 mana card on t2, we want an extra land. 4 Jace also plays nice with extra land, since we can loot the excess away.
If we start shaving Jace, can we also shave the 15th land or 3rd Griselbrand?
Since we had to add Jace, we had to make some cuts.
- LDV has been a contentious card; some of us (me included) swear by the card, since it allows for consistent t3 kills, and allows us to find the right combination of cards to combo off. It also made for a nice imprint on Chrome Mox. Other people dislike it since it doesn't draw into itself and can cost an excess amount of life if we are particularly unlucky.
- Reanimate is another flex slot. It's great for reanimating Children mid combo, it gives us a traditional reanimator angle, and has the added benefit of being able to target creatures in our opponent's gy (getting someone's young pyro was a great time, or even their binned Iona are my two highlights). As a 1 of though, it only came up rarely, and I often cut this card if I played against burn, goblins, or rug- essentially against lightning bolt decks. Reanimate could be great with Jace, since we can bring back Jace and flash it back at a later turn. But, adding 4 Jace necessitated us adding an extra land and griselbrand, so Reanimate had to get cut.
- Chrome Mox is great, since we often need an IMS mid combo to finish off our opponent, and we can only run 4 Petal. It was card disadvantage, but always a welcome sight in a draw 7. Doesn't play nicely with Jace though, since Jace wants cards in the gy and Mox puts one in exile. Minor nonbo there. Easy cut.
- Thoughtseize- This card is great, and despite the fact we want as much life as possible before comboing off, it provided protection and utility in targetting ourselves to discard reanimation targets. Last cut I would make, but it had to be made to support the Jace package.
So, let's tie it all together:
- Jace allows us to draw more cards, until we hit a certain point (which happens quickly), and then we get at least 1 spell for flashback, maybe 2 if the game is a longer one. Since the front side is a looting side, we added an extra Griselbrand to gain some value from the discard, and an extra land, since any beyond a certain point isn't necessary, but we want to reliably cast a 2 mana spell.
- Since we kept 4 Cabal Therapy in the deck, and are adding 4 creatures to the deck, we can be a bit more aggressive with the therapies, and get more flashback throughout the course of the game. Since we are getting more shots with discard, then the 2-3 thoughtseize aren't as necessary.
- Since we added an extra land, we're likely to be comboing off a bit later than usual (i did have a number of t2 kills with the list, so we're still plenty fast). Extra mana going into the combo turn makes the Chrome Mox less necessary.
- LDV served the purpose of digging and setting up, for the cost of two mana. LDV will see more cards than Jace, but the life cost can be high. Both Jace and LDV are slow. Jace, however, brings more utility, and I think can get the nod.
- Reanimate: since Jace is legendary, we can use Goryo (and Grave) to bring him back from the dead. Even better, reanimating gives haste, and flipping Jace lets him stick around. Since you can reanimate Jace, the first -3 can easily go to the same reanimation spell, and allow us to not sweat early discard. Reanimate is cool, but with Jace, the other reanimation spells get way more mileage.
The beauty of running 4 Jace is that we can pitch excess Jace off of the looting, and just as easily transform and cast another one. Having 4 also means that we can flashback Cabal Therapy more often, and not have to sweat it too much if we have to sacrifice Jace, since we are likely to find another.
The more I think about it, the more I like Jace, at least in theory. In testing, it's worked out, but obviously I need more.
- Does Jace move us closer to comboing off?
- Does Jacefins outperform the stock list?
- Does Jace make our bad matchups (Miracles, RUG (maybe?)) better?
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
This is an excellent summary - thanks for writing it up. I like the cuts and changes you made to accommodate 4 Jaces, and your reasoning as well. All seems very solid to me - I like still having Children and Tendrils in the deck as well - that's where we get some of our insane lines that win us games that we wouldn't otherwise.
I think your questions are valid ones too - and in my opinion, to summarize the matchups I'd like to see if we improve in are:
- Miracles
- Chalice.dec
- BUG (Delver is the worst, but BUG in general)
- Death and Taxes - particularly in games where we are off to a slow start. We know it's easy mode if you just have it early, but if you stall out, this can be a really tough one
A couple additional questions to ask from my perspective:
- How does the addition of Jace and removal of a non land IMS and reanimate affect our fizzle rate?
- Probably a follow on to the previous one, if the fizzle rate goes up, do you split Jace between maindeck and sideboard?
And for those interested, a quick summary of my event tonight. Was on my NJ list from last year, but -1 Tundra, +1 Underground Sea.
Rd 1: TES
We're faster. I ended up boarding 4 SDT in for Probes to win the cripple fight if it came to that. This turned out to be a good call - I think I'll board in 3 SDT and 1 CoV next time though.
2-0
Rd 2: Infect
Some good blind names with Therapy coupled with Tin Fins being faster got there. I kept a ballsy no lander game 2 - but so did he. He drew a land first.
2-1
Rd 3: Elves
He didn't get deathrite shamans. Bounced his needle with CoV G2 then won with reanimation.
2-0
Rd 4: Imperial Bomberman
2 very interesting games - game 1 won through Meddling Mage naming Entomb and Gaddock Teeg. Went infinite and set up the next turn to win - he could have top decked to kill me though. Game 2 won through Thorn of Amethyst, Canonist, and Magus of the Moon - reanimated Griselbrand once to swing for 7 and draw 7. Played some lands and Lotus Petals and hardcast the other Griselbrand. Fun games.
so 4-0 on the night. Never boarded into Doomsday. Oh well.
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
I think the Miracles match-up gets better. I did get to play this one, and my opponent spent more resources dealing with my Jace(s) that I was able to combo out fairly easily. That being said, I definitely think my opponent was relatively inexperienced with her deck, and definitely hadn't played against Tinfins.
Against Chalice.dec: I think this one also improves. The first 2 Chalice seem to be @1&2, so we can get Jace down pretty easily. Furthermore, having the additional land makes it so we can more reliably have 3 lands versus 3sphere. From there, we either loot into Serenity and set up the combo, or we flip Jace and go ultimate. I don't believe they pack much removal, so a resolved Jace could easily go the distance.
BUG gets more interesting... Abrupt Decay is now live against us. On g2&3, if they think Jace is a threat to keep down, they'll probably keep Decay in and not board into as much countermagic/discard/other stuff. At the same time, they could not fear Jace, and just focus on shutting down our actual game plan. Match-up probably stays the same.
Death and Taxes: Karakas goes the extra mile against us, and Swords can get rid of Jace as well. Probably stays the same in g1, and then we just crush them with Dread of Night g2 &g3, as long as we don't get too far behind.
Once again, just theory here, but I think Jace does help out against some of those harder match-ups, while keeping the other 2 roughly the same.
I think that our fizzle rate on t1 and t2 goes up a smidge, and our fizzle rate t3 stays equal, and t4 and beyond it goes down. I don't have math backing that up, just a feeling.
If the fizzle rate is much higher, then perhaps a cut could be made, but I think if you drop below 3 Jace, the extra land and Griselbrand get a lot worse, and the 3rd and 4th Jace do pretty well with the extra land and Griselbrand. Based on my previous post, I think that if you want to add Jace, you have to commit fully for him, otherwise you're better off sticking with the stock list. I could see cutting either the extra land or the griselbrand for an extra IMS or Reanimate, but I think that it might make the deck a bit weaker.
Similarly, it also depends on your sideboard plan. If you want to jam Mentors, 16 land is where you want to be, but if you cut them, that opens up 5 sb slots for more specific hate OR 4 Jace+1 land if you want to keep the deck more lean on the maindeck but have a bit more grind in the sideboard.
For a 4 Jace+1 land board vs the above decks (compared to the Mentor+1 land):
Miracles: I definitely want Jace, but the Mentor plan works great against them. Jace on his own is probably good enough though.
Chalice: Same as above, Jace is great, but I can see Mentor doing wonders, since resolving a creature makes things easier against this deck.
BUG: I don't care for Mentor here, and I'm indifferent towards Jace. The deck with Jace in the sideboard might do better, since we are likely to have more Discard to disrupt them.
Death and Taxes: Jace is helpful g1, probably good g2&3, whereas Mentor stays in the sideboard since we want our Dread of Nights. The sideboarded Jaces aren't likely to come in though, since we want DoN, Serenity, Needle, and 2Chainz in some number.
Now, to find somebody to actually test these thoughts.
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
Hello,
I can help you for this, as I've spent a lot of time evaluating the usefulness of chrome mox (I needed a slot to add LabMan from the .dk DD SB, and it's an amazing slot).
To try it out properly, I did 100 goldfish games OTP and 100 OTD in a 61-card list including chrome mox (pretty stock list, including 2 LDV).
If drawn, I checked if I can kill without it. If not and I could have kill with it, I draw a card and see if I can kill.
And I was as surprised as pleased to see that the fizzle rate didn't change much. It increases slightly when you go off T1/2 (3 games fizzled while I could have win with mox), but my ability to go off without C. Mox was better (all these games when you have to BS/shuffle, PN/shuffle, or worse cannot shuffle C. Mox).
And think that in real games, mox only get worse compared to goldfishing.
So, do not worry about removing chrome mox from your list. And if you play the DD transformation SB, add a LabMan in it, you'll be amaze of how easier it can be in some set-ups. :)
lab man over the shelldock isle plan? :) why so
not over. Additionally.
SI is often a double pass the turn pile, while it's quite easy to make a pass the turn pile with Labman. Otherwise I made a lot of SI piles with Labman as a backup (vs needle, waste, stifle, terminus,...).
Sometimes, as we do not play BW, you can only reach 18 with a ToA pile. Most of the time you can simply win with Labman in these conditions (it requires higher life total thought).
You can also slam DD much more easily on turn 1. Vs combo deck, you can make a disruption pile to play discard *2 next turn into labman turn win, etc....
Vs tempo.decks, it is less vulnerable to soft counters (you play DD earlier).
Globally, it adds some lines of play. You have three ways to win the game through a resolved doomsday, so you have 4 ways to win the game post transformational side.
There are a bunch of reasons that one might want Lab Maniac instead of Shelldock Isle. It's a much more resilient win condition than Shelldock -> Emrakul is. When DTT was legal, I was trying to figure out a way to board into 4 DTT Doomsday with Lab Maniac as the wincon. If I were to play Lab Maniac, I would probably want a Chromatic Sphere in the 75 somewhere though.
As far as your experiments with Chrome Mox go - those are interesting observations. Maybe I'm playing the deck more aggressively than you are, as I'll tend to keep 0 landers with a Lotus Petal and such, and burn those IMS pre-combo. My goal is to go off T1 or T2 as often as possible to make them have the answers in hand, and not get a chance to drop annoyances like Deathrite Shaman or the like. I wonder what the fizzle rate difference is specifically for T1/T2.
I keep asking all these questions and not actually getting any data myself. Geez, I suck.
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
I also play aggressively, and I think that it might matter a couple extra games over the long run.There are a bunch of reasons that one might want Lab Maniac instead of Shelldock Isle. It's a much more resilient win condition than Shelldock -> Emrakul is. When DTT was legal, I was trying to figure out a way to board into 4 DTT Doomsday with Lab Maniac as the wincon. If I were to play Lab Maniac, I would probably want a Chromatic Sphere in the 75 somewhere though.
As far as your experiments with Chrome Mox go - those are interesting observations. Maybe I'm playing the deck more aggressively than you are, as I'll tend to keep 0 landers with a Lotus Petal and such, and burn those IMS pre-combo. My goal is to go off T1 or T2 as often as possible to make them have the answers in hand, and not get a chance to drop annoyances like Deathrite Shaman or the like. I wonder what the fizzle rate difference is specifically for T1/T2.
I keep asking all these questions and not actually getting any data myself. Geez, I suck.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
I do not play very aggressively.
On the labman point, I do not want to replace SI, it's an addition. Having both is really nice, and you play some piles with both.
Ok, so to answer my own question, I did a bit of goldfishing. The question I was trying to answer was how much of an affect on fizzle rate does the singleton Chrome Mox have if you're going off on T1 or T2. The list I used was my GP NJ maindeck -1 Tundra, +1 Underground Sea.
I goldfished hands assuming that I was on the play that looked like they had T1 or T2 potential and I would keep it in a real game - I didn't want to test super high variance hands that would have blowout potential if it failed. I drew a new 7 if it didn't meet that criteria - I did not count how often I threw those hands back (in hindsight I should have). I also only recorded a result if the hand successfully combo-ed off on T1 or T2 - defined as actually getting a Griselbrand in play. There were probably many other things I could have tallied along the way, but didn't really think about it until I was halfway done. I can run more experiments too, if there is other interesting data to gather.
Here was my tally for 50 hands that successfully made Griselbrand on T1/T2:
Fizzles (defined as GB hits play, short an IMS)
T1: 0
T2: 0
Needed Chrome Mox to actually win
T1: 2
T2: 2 (wouldn’t have mattered if it were a land)
Chrome Mox Didn't Matter:
T1: 8
T2: 38 (1 time I needed Chrome Mox to make Emrakul pre-combat, didn't matter if Tendrils is fine post-combat)
So overall, there were 4 cases out of 50 that would have fizzled without Chrome Mox and 2 if Chrome Mox were a land. I could see a case for replacing it with a land to try to reduce the mulligan rate of the deck, but my feeling (again no data on this one) is that the deck mulligans pretty well as it is. However if you do that, you seem to be significantly more likely to fizzle when going off on T1: 2/10 attempts would fail in this case.
Assuming my data is statistically significant and if going off on T1 is important, then I wouldn't cut Chrome Mox. And personally, I think T1 combo importance depends on how many Deathrite Shamans you think are going to be around. T1 potential is an important tool when fighting against them, in my experience.
Anyway, hope that was useful to someone/anyone and I'd be happy to do more testing, modify my methodology, or gather additional/different data if anyone is interested.
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
Follow up on .dk's post: using a similar methodolgy that we both agreed upon, I goldfished 25 games with the Jace list to see the fizzle rate. My goal is to do 100, but I wanted to give an update with my results.
Parameters:
- If you combo'd and didn't kill that turn, it counted as a fizzle.
- I kept hands I would keep in an actual tournament
- I stopped after 4 turns, if it didn't kill after 4 turns, it counted as a fizzle
- Each game we are on the play
- I used my physical deck to do each test
Things I kept track of:
- Kills
- Total Fizzles
- Fizzles due to lack of nonland ims
- Fizzles that led to a next turn kill
- Number of times Jace was cast and used
- Mulligans
- #YOLO keeps
The results:
Kills Fizzles
t1 4 2
t2 2 3
t3 6 1
t4+ 3 4
Total 15 10
Total games 25
Further breakdown of results
Kills Fizzles NIMS Mulligans YOLO Jace on battlefield Combo to set up next turn kill
t1 4 2 0 0 1 1 2
t2 2 3 0 2 1 1 3
t3 6 1 0 1 0 2 1
t4+ 3 4* 0 2 0 3 1
Total 15 10 0 5 2 7 7
*: If the game went past t4, I counted it as a fizzle on turn 4.
Things I didn't keep track of:
- Number of kills that involved swinging with Griselbrand+Emrakul
- Number of Tendrils kills
- Number of times Children were sacced
- Number of times I reanimated Jace
- Mulligans to specific numbers
- Whether or not I scryed to the top or bottom after a mulligan
Things that surprised me:
How often I got the turn 1 kill
How I never fizzled due to missing a nonland IMS (Lotus Petal/Chrome Mox)
How even after mulligans I still was able to kill on t2 a number of times
Remember, this is a small sample size, 25 "games" is just barely more than an FNM, and this was against the goldfish trying to smash out the combo as soon as possible.
I think the deck is performing above average here, but my lifetime record with this deck is above average I think (no brags, okay some brags).
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
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