[Article] UGB Thresh vs Ad Nauseam Tendrils - HiVal

[frogboy]

With Ad Nauseam decks performing consistently well, it's becoming more and more important to know how to play with them and against them. As you'll remember from last month, I promised a look at the deck and what I think is its most challenging matchup, UGB Threshold. I'll be going in-depth with these games to show you all the critical decision-making trees that arise and how to make the best choices with incomplete information. We'll take a look at two full matches, giving you a good sense of pre-and post-board games.

I don't really get what Angel's Grace does for you and would probably just default to asking Bryant how to board.

I tend to prefer articles with higher n and more primer-like material derived from those matches as opposed to pure play-by-play but in terms of 'One Game'-esque articles, this was pretty good.

edit: link: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/16892_Unlocking_Legacy_An_Ad_NauseamThreshold_Matchup_Analysis.html

[Pinder]

I don't really get what Angel's Grace does for you

I would assume it's for use with Ad Nauseam, so you can draw infy cards without losing. Not to say that that's really any good, or that you can't already draw essentially infy cards with Ad Nauseam (i.e., enough to win).

[frogboy]

I would assume it's for use with Ad Nauseam, so you can draw infy cards without losing. Not to say that that's really any good, or that you can't already draw essentially infy cards with Ad Nauseam (i.e., enough to win).

Right, that's my point.

[Deep6er]

I think one of the fundamental flaws associated with this is that it's apparent that both players (I'm hoping there's another player, I may have missed it in the article) are walking into the game with knowledge not only of what they're playing, but exact deck lists (from what it seems).

That distorts the match. Simply put, if Threshold knows what it's opponent is playing, certain cards are more valuable in analyzing the opening hand.

Also, I feel that Counterbalance is more important to consider in this match up, and should have been included instead of a different list. It's more important in the analysis of a deck to look at worst case scenarios and build from there. After all, Counterbalance (active or not) is devastating to most Combo decks.

Even besides the fact that I disagree with so many cards in the Threshold list, the Tendrils list seems like it would be the worst option to play in this match up.

Given different options, I prefer The Epic Storm as the Combo deck to test against because Fetchland Tendrils takes longer to set up (which means a higher chance of Counterbalance landing on the table). I'll give you that with time, it's more resilient, but time is of the utmost importance when you're dealing with Counterbalance. Plus, since Counterbalance is one of this format's more powerful (and definitely a strong consideration for sideboards of most decks) and near defining cards, it should be included to make the analysis more complete.

Basically, it boils down to this: I don't like either list. I think they're poor representations of the decks, and that colors the analysis in a negative way.

[Illissius]

I would assume it's for use with Ad Nauseam, so you can draw infy cards without losing. Not to say that that's really any good, or that you can't already draw essentially infy cards with Ad Nauseam (i.e., enough to win).

More importantly, it lets you go off when you have something like 3 life. (I'm not implying anything else, for example, whether or not it's good, which I have no idea about.)

[Nihil Credo]

I feel Deep6er's observations are largely correct, however:

1) The preboard opening hands looked keepable to me against a generic opponent

EDIT: OK, shuffling away 2x Tarmogoyf, Mongoose in the first game is questionable. Triple Goyf with FoW backup plus Putrefy is a beating unless expecting either Wasteland or combo.

2) While CounterTop probably causes more match losses to Ad Nauseam than Stifle/Waste, it's a much less interesting subject for this type of article series since there are much less play paths to examine (it's basically "get rid of it or die", barring some very rare case in which ANT gets the nuts and UGB gets manascrewed and has to leave Counterbalance in "Chalice" mode).

I'll comment more once I finish reading this. By the way, why hasn't the SCG home page updated yet?

[frogboy]

It has. The article is due to go up the 26th, but they post the relevant topics in the Feedback forum and you can follow the link from there, or check the archives, or tell SCG to load the page as of 12/26.

And yeah, needs more Counterbalance.

[Obfuscate Freely]

You don't get to label anything as ANT's "most challenging matchup" unless it has Counterbalance in it, so it's pretty baffling to completely ignore that card while attempting to analyze the Threshold matchup. I mean, if someone is looking at Legacy combo decks, they absolutely need to have Counterbalance on their radar, so omitting the card really tanks the usefulness of this article.

Srsly. The article is titled "An Ad Nauseam/Threshold Matchup Analysis," and Ctrl-F for "Counterbalance" returns no results. There is something wrong with that.

Of course, both decklists are horrible for other reasons, as well (lol @ 3x Ponder in both decks), and the actual walkthrough is rife with play mistakes and questionable decisions. I really like these kinds of articles, but they rapidly lose their appeal as these problems add up, and this one was basically worthless. Sorry, Doug.

[emidln]

Either Duress and Plains or Pyroblast and red lands would have been in the sideboard for jegger's list. Either strategy is significantly better than Angel's Grace against Tempo Thresh. The correct way to sideboard with either list from deckcheck seems to be this:

(red build)
-1 Cabal Ritual
-1 Ponder
-1 Infernal Tutor
-1 Mystical Tutor
-1 Rushing River
-2 Chrome Mox

+3 Pyroblast
+2 Duress
+2 Volcanic Island

(white build)
-1 Chrome Mox
-1 Infernal Tutor
-1 Rushing River

+2 Duress
+1 Plains

Also, a minor error, but if you can get the SCG editors to fix the first game, you imply that you cast Orim's Chant post-Ad Nauseam but don't actually write it (you imprint it a chant with two in hand and mention that Chant worked well).

[hi-val]

PChapin wrote an article awhile ago about how to do effective testing, and one of his points was that you shouldn't pretend that you don't know what's in your testing partner's deck and walk right into their Dazes and such, because in a real event, you probably will know what your opponent is playing past round 3 or so. In the limited space for my article, I didn't want to waste the reader's time with "this is a good hand against everything but combo, but this is a combo match and I'm keeping, so here's 1000 words detailing how this hand loses!" I was writing more in line with a play-by-play like this article by Steve:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/11761_Matchup_Analysis_Meandeck_Ichorid_vs_Brassman_Gifts.html

Like I explained in the article, I chose two decklists that had done well recently and were middle-of-the-road in terms of what you'd expect at an event.

I discussed using Angel's Grace in last month's column and I wanted to show readers what it did(n't) do, so I had it in this article. Emidln, I was unsure of whether you actually board at all against Threshold, or how much you board, because the blasts/Duresses don't seem to me to have the punch that Mystical Tutor for Chant or the like has. Speaking of Chant, like I said in the SCG forum, it was an oversight; if I'd noticed it in time, then I'd have tried to hit another Chrome Mox or Petal off of Ad Nauseam. You're likely to see at least 3 more cards off of it, so it's a good chance to take. The other alternative would be drawing into more Dark Rituals and just storming out, so there would be two ways to get around things there. Sorry about the error though, and good spot for seeing it!

Regarding Counterbalance:

I went through plenty of decks here:

http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?type=Threshold+UGb&format=Legacy

and you'd actually be astounded at how few of these decks run Counterbalance. The ones that did, I found, were 8 or 13-person events, usually. Carl Dillahay's TML list didn't run any, for example. Ruggero Moroni's 1st place list out of a 90-man event didn't run any. I found that, as weird as it is, Counterbalance just isn't that common in BUG Threshold and I wanted to present representative lists to my audience.

That said, I was considering audibling to testing against Rich Shay's Dreadstill list, since it had Cbal and Stifle in it. Since I'd already gotten a good buzz about UGB Threshold against ANT, I wanted to follow through with it.

Against a deck with Counterbalance, it's blindingly obvious to sideboard in the Pyroblasts, though : )

I hope you don't spot any more errors, because I went over this a lot and I thought everything was written clearly, even though it was taken from shorthand match notes. If you spot any, please point them out so I can hopefully correct them. I was writing under the brain drain of post-exam stupor.

[Kuma]

Why do people insist on running Ponder and Top over Duress? These hands would have been so much better if the Ponders and Tops were 4x Duress and 1x Ad Nauseum.


ANT wins the die roll and opens the following:

Polluted Delta
Scrubland
Cabal Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Orim's Chant
Ponder
Ponder

ANT plays the Polluted Delta, breaking it to get Island and casts Ponder. Ponder reveals Orim's Chant, Ad Nauseam and Mystical Tutor. ANT draws the Mystical Tutor, putting Ad Nauseam on top of the library.

Turn one and two Duress followed by turn three Ad Nauseum seems better in this case than Ponders. Of course this one depends on how you use the Fetchland and what shuffling your deck gives you. Or if one of the Ponders was a third Ad Nauseum.


we see these six:

Ponder
Mystical Tutor
Lotus Petal
Cabal Ritual
Orim's Chant
Flooded Strand.

UGB sends it back for:

Wasteland
Nimble Mongoose
Force of Will
Underground Sea
Extirpate
Stifle

This one is complicated, but I'll give the edge to Ponder since the manabase was screwed with. But I'm not sure ANT could have won that game no matter what the card was.


Ad Nauseam's hand is:

Ponder
Dark Ritual
Mystical Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Swamp
Polluted Delta
Lion's Eye Diamond

The Ponder shows Orim's Chant, Ponder and Lotus Petal.



This one was ridiculously strong either way, but a hand with Duress + Chant is a real nut-kicker. Going off turn two with Chant protection having Duressed turn one should be gg vs nearly any Thresh hand.


UGB opens a good hand containing:

Flooded Strand
Polluted Delta
Stifle
Nimble Mongoose
Polluted Delta
Dark Confidant
Swamp

It's not the most amazing hand but it's got a Stifle and some early pressure.

ANT keeps:

Scrubland
Dark Ritual
Ponder
Polluted Delta
Polluted Delta
Chrome Mox
Sensei's Divining Top

If Ponder or Top were a Duress, the Stifle on the fetch could have been avoided, and the ANT player would know the Thresh player had no other disruption in hand. If one of the Ponder or Top were an Ad Nauseum, this hand is great.

[emidln]

I was unsure of whether you actually board at all against Threshold, or how much you board, because the blasts/Duresses don't seem to me to have the punch that Mystical Tutor for Chant or the like has.

You don't board out Chant for Duress/Pyroblast. You would board out cards that are grossly ineffective in the matchup for Duress/Pyroblast. A primary goal is to be able to not mystical tutor for protection because Mystical Tutor isn't as reliable as we'd like it to be (it baits Daze and Extirpate a lot). You also board in lands against a mana denial deck.

It was a nice article outside of that. I have seen arguments for not diluting the deck vs tempo thresh but testing has kicked all of them to the curb. The matchup against Dreadstill is interesting (but IMO far easier ) because you're not worrying about Thoughtseize/Duress limiting your ability to reduce bomb density for hate postboard. If you are looking for the worst matchup for storm combo, it seems to come at the crossroads of Counterbalance, Thoughtseize/Duress, and Force of Will backed by Brainstorm/Ponder/SDT from my experience*.

*This is due to the clock that a 2cc enchantment that forces you to completely switch gears imposes. The very easy regular strategy for beating tempo thresh is to not combo off in the early turns. They have a limited number of hard counters that are easy to neutralize in the midgame with your protection spells (at a point when Daze is no longer a hard counter and Spell Snares/Stifles aren't yet relevant (that is, if you're attempting to use Stifle as a tool to stop Storm compared with its use as Mana Denial to not let Storm combo break into the mid game). Counterbalance forces you to either play roulette with Threshold's plentiful and cheap disruption or to build a way like Pyroblast/Krosan Grip/Wipe Away into your game plan.

@ Kuma

Are you serious? This makes me question all of your comments regarding storm combo:





ANT wins the die roll and opens the following:

Polluted Delta
Scrubland
Cabal Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Orim's Chant
Ponder
Ponder


Turn one and two Duress followed by turn three Ad Nauseum seems better in this case than Ponders. Of course this one depends on how you use the Fetchland and what shuffling your deck gives you. Or if one of the Ponders was a third Ad Nauseum.

Welcome to your nice hand of six. That is unless you are going to let yourself draw off the top with no relevant acceleration to find extra mana AND a bomb. If Ponder is Duress in this hand, it's unkeepable.

[Kuma]

@ Kuma

Are you serious? This makes me question all of your comments regarding storm combo:

Welcome to your nice hand of six. That is unless you are going to let yourself draw off the top with no relevant acceleration to find extra mana AND a bomb. If Ponder is Duress in this hand, it's unkeepable.

I'll admit I may have misspoke with that first hand. My statement was based on having Ad Nauseum as the second card from the top, which is information you don't have when you make the decision. Still, with my proposed changes of -3 Ponder, -2 Sensei's Divining Top +4 Duress, +1 Ad Nauseum, that hand has a %40 chance of being:

Polluted Delta
Scrubland
Cabal Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Orim's Chant
Duress
Ad Nauseum

Which is an excellent hand against Threshold. If that Nauseum were a second Duress, the hand would be risky as it would certainly lose if Thresh goes aggro, but would have a very good chance of winning if Thresh plays control. It's a tough call, mulling would be the gutsy play, that's for sure.

Keeping hands on the basis of Pondering into something you need should only be done begrudgingly.

Out of the four hands, in one Ponder was better, but the game was a lost cause, and in one Duress/Ad Nauseum was better. In one, Duress/AN had a 40% chance of an excellent hand and a 60% chance of a tough mull decision. With Ponder, that hand would be solid, but not amazing. I don't want solid but not amazing vs a match like Threshold. Finally, one hand had a 40% chance of being excellent, and a 60% chance of a mulligan, vs a slow but playable hand with Ponder and Top.

Vs. Thresh I'd rather gamble on the excellent hands than hope I Ponder/Top into something useful.

[Jaiminho]

I'll admit I may have misspoke with that first hand. My statement was based on having Ad Nauseum as the second card from the top, which is information you don't have when you make the decision. Still, with my proposed changes of -3 Ponder, -2 Sensei's Divining Top +4 Duress, +1 Ad Nauseum, that hand has a %40 chance of being:

Polluted Delta
Scrubland
Cabal Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Orim's Chant
Duress
Ad Nauseum

Mind telling us how did you get that 40%?

[ParkerLewis]

I think one of the fundamental flaws associated with this is that it's apparent that both players (I'm hoping there's another player, I may have missed it in the article) are walking into the game with knowledge not only of what they're playing, but exact deck lists (from what it seems).

That distorts the match. Simply put, if Threshold knows what it's opponent is playing, certain cards are more valuable in analyzing the opening hand.

Also, I feel that Counterbalance is more important to consider in this match up, and should have been included instead of a different list. It's more important in the analysis of a deck to look at worst case scenarios and build from there. After all, Counterbalance (active or not) is devastating to most Combo decks.

Even besides the fact that I disagree with so many cards in the Threshold list, the Tendrils list seems like it would be the worst option to play in this match up.

Given different options, I prefer The Epic Storm as the Combo deck to test against because Fetchland Tendrils takes longer to set up (which means a higher chance of Counterbalance landing on the table). I'll give you that with time, it's more resilient, but time is of the utmost importance when you're dealing with Counterbalance. Plus, since Counterbalance is one of this format's more powerful (and definitely a strong consideration for sideboards of most decks) and near defining cards, it should be included to make the analysis more complete.

Basically, it boils down to this: I don't like either list. I think they're poor representations of the decks, and that colors the analysis in a negative way.

Agree totally, except on the not knowing your opponent's deck part (for the reasons mentioned in hi-val's later post).

But yeah, I still feel like CB should have been in the list, in place of some (at least what seemed) maybe "metagame" slots (MD Krosan & Putrefy ?).

Other than that, I also feel the need to praise what needs to be praised. Ie, the whole rest, content and execution. These smennen-like play-by-play analysis articles are always very interesting and informative, and congratulations for doing a good job at it.

[Kuma]

Mind telling us how did you get that 40%?

If the three Ponder and two Sensei's Divining Top are replaced by four Duress and one Ad Nauseum, then each Ponder or Top you would draw would instead be an Ad Nauseum 20% of the time. If you have two of Ponder/Top, then 20% + 20% = 40%.

[jazzykat]

It has been said before but the lists are a bit wonky. However, I don't think this should turn into a discussion of why we should run card x instead of y.

In reading it, it lacked the asshattery and bombast of many of the previous articles and got down to the meat and potatoes for actual legacy players.

As to play decisions I am not sure that you should worry that much about that, people have different styles, amounts of risk tolerance, and play skill. While the gurus of the particular decks may be able to pick out "errors" I don't think an average player would necessarily be able to.

As to counterbalance...it's your call but without counterbalance your life does become easier as the ANT player.

[jegger]

Good Article Doug Linn.

There are some choices that I wouldn't done and the boarding plan isn't so great, but the article is well done and I think many people appreciate the effort.

I love all people say my decklist is horrible. :smile:

[emidln]

I'll admit I may have misspoke with that first hand. My statement was based on having Ad Nauseum as the second card from the top, which is information you don't have when you make the decision. Still, with my proposed changes of -3 Ponder, -2 Sensei's Divining Top +4 Duress, +1 Ad Nauseum, that hand has a %40 chance of being:

No. You have a 25% chance. The 20% with the draw of the first card from five isn't additive to the draw from four. If you don't hit Ad Nauseam in the first card (a 20% chance) you have a 25% chance to hit Ad Nauseam as the second card. Even so, that hand still isn't keepable. You're banking that Threshold doesn't have mana disruption/Spell Snare or Daze, in addition to the normal threats of CB (if they don't have mana disruption) and Force of Will (which incidentally are what your turn 1 Duress has to hit). You're still in a shitty situation drawing off the top. This is exactly why Ponder and Sensei's Divining Top are played.


Keeping hands on the basis of Pondering into something you need should only be done begrudgingly.

No. Keeping hands on the power of cantrips is how this deck maintains any semblance of consistency. When you ponder you are looking for a certain class of cards. Ponder into a 4-of is unreliable but ponder into any business spell is looking three deep and possibly a shuffle for any of 10-11 (depending on your hand if Tendrils is a legitimate business spell) business spells presents really good odds. This is similar to Pondering for a ritual effect (8 rituals + 4 led + 4 mystical tutor + 4 lotus petal) or Pondering for protection (4 Chant + 4 Mystical Tutor).

[Jaiminho]

No. You have a 25% chance. The 20% with the draw of the first card from five isn't additive to the draw from four. If you don't hit Ad Nauseam in the first card (a 20% chance) you have a 25% chance to hit Ad Nauseam as the second card.

He is right regarding the 40%. Hitting it as the first card is 0.2. Hitting it as the second card is (1 - 0.2)*0.25 = 0.2. Either will do, so it's 0.4 (it's additive, since there is no dependency -- you've explicitly set a conditional for eliminating the first when calculating the second). Double checking, you'll see that the chance of drawing no ANs will be 0.6.

Not only 40% is unfavorable, but also the points I made in the ANT thread still stand, which happen to be what Emidln is saying above.

[Bardo]

Just read this and I enjoyed it. Well done. As was noted above, the omission of the word "Counterbalance" was glaring, because that is a full-bore kick that ball-sack for the storm deck.

Besides that, it had a good mix of strategy, head games, humor and elan. Thanks. You had fun writing it and it showed. :)

Off now to play some more Slime Volleyball (http://oneslime.net/). Thanks for the tip Illussius.

[andrew77]

If the three Ponder and two Sensei's Divining Top are replaced by four Duress and one Ad Nauseum, then each Ponder or Top you would draw would instead be an Ad Nauseum 20% of the time. If you have two of Ponder/Top, then 20% + 20% = 40%.

so 40 percent of the time its better while the other 60 percent of the time you have to mulligan. Doesn't seem that good to me...

[Kuma]

Not only 40% is unfavorable, but also the points I made in the ANT thread still stand, which happen to be what Emidln is saying above.


so 40 percent of the time its better while the other 60 percent of the time you have to mulligan. Doesn't seem that good to me...

I'd look at it as 40% of the time you get a god hand vs 60% of the time you get a medicore to poor hand. If we put the odds of winning with a god hand at 90% and the mediocre to poor hand at 30% including the odds of winning with a mulligan hand, we get:

(.4 * .9) + (.6 * .3) = 54% chance of winning with the Duress/Ad Nauseum setup. Which would then be compared with the odds of beating Thresh with that hand with Ponders, which is probably 40-55% depending on numerous factors.

I'll admit that I'm pulling numbers out of my butt here, but this is how the question should be approached.


No. Keeping hands on the power of cantrips is how this deck maintains any semblance of consistency. When you ponder you are looking for a certain class of cards. Ponder into a 4-of is unreliable but ponder into any business spell is looking three deep and possibly a shuffle for any of 10-11 (depending on your hand if Tendrils is a legitimate business spell) business spells presents really good odds. This is similar to Pondering for a ritual effect (8 rituals + 4 led + 4 mystical tutor + 4 lotus petal) or Pondering for protection (4 Chant + 4 Mystical Tutor).

The following odds assume you play a Ponder turn one on the play and didn't mulligan. Here's an explanation for how I did some of the calculations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergeometric_distribution)

Let's look at the odds when we replace four Duress and one Ad Nauseum with five Ponders (Obviously we can't do this, but it's hard to do math for Top and these results should approximate reality). I'm not going to count Mystical Tutors as targets, since Pondering into Mystical into card means we won't see the card for three turns in my scenario.

One Ponder in hand and we need Ad Nauseum, of which we have two in the deck: (2 nCr 1)(51 nCr 2) / (53 nCr 3) + (2 nCr 2)(51 nCr 0) / (53 nCr 3) + .8890 * (2/53) = .1446 Compared with 20% if we replace Ponders with Duress and Ad Nauseum.

Two Ponders in hand and we need Ad Nauseum, of which we have two in the deck: .1446 + .8554 * ((2 nCr 1)(50 nCr 2) / (52 nCr 3) + (2 nCr 2)(50 nCr 0) / (52 nCr 3) + .8891 * (2/52)) = .2687 Compared with 40% if we replace Ponders with Duress and Ad Nauseum.

Now, let's look at the odds of Pondering into protection, assuming we only run four Orim's Chants as protection and have none in our opening hand.

One Ponder: (4 nCr 1)(49 nCr 2) / (53 nCr 3) + (4 nCr 2)(49 nCr 1) / (53 nCr 3) + (4 nCr 3)(49 nCr 0) / (53 nCr 3) + .7864 * (4/53) = .2729 Compared with 80% if we replace Ponders with Duress and Ad Nauseum.

Two Ponders: .2729 + .7271 * ((4 nCr 1)(48 nCr 2) / (52 nCr 3) + (4 nCr 2)(48 nCr 1) / (52 nCr 3) + (4 nCr 3)(48 nCr 0) / (52 nCr 3) + .7826 * (4/52) = .4747 Compared with 100% if we replace Ponders with Duress and Ad Nauseum.

Obviously the odds of Pondering into mana is incredibly high, and for simplicity's sake I'm not going to calculate it here. It is worth noting that the deck is around half mana -- 14 land, 4 Dark Ritual, 4 Cabal Ritual, 4 Lotus Petal and 4 LED and 4 Chrome Mox, which I'll count as half mana sources since they have restrictions on when they can be used as mana, gives us with 30/60 cards that produce mana. This means you have a ~50% chance of drawing mana each draw step.

If we count our Ponders as mana sources for this purpose, we now have 35/60 cards that get us mana for a 58.33% chance of drawing mana with each draw step. There are problems with this calculation, but it does provide a decent generalization of the odds of finding mana with Ponder in the deck.

If you really think the increase in finding something we have 30 of is worth the tradeoff in finding things we have less of, then by all means run Ponder over protection and Ad Nauseum.

[emidln]

Ponder into Mystical Tutor gives you Ad Nauseam next turn (Mystical Tuotr on your upkeep). Having it next turn is fundamentally the same as having it this turn because in either case you cannot go off turn 2 because you lack the requisite mana to play protection and Ad Nauseam (let alone play around something like Daze) in the 2 Ponder hand. Even if you draw a mana source on your turn 2 draw step with Duress/Ad Nauseam in place of Ponder/SDT you are still short of mana needed to combo off unless you draw Dark Ritual with LED being completely unhelpful. I'll let you do the exact math but it appears you have a roughly 1 in 2 shot of seeing a mana source each time, with a slightly better than 1 in 7 chance that if you do see a mana source, it will actually let you win. If you don't hit Dark Ritual, you are still waiting until turn 3 to combo and that's with several restrictions (Chrome Mox doesn't help you very much because you are short on cards to pitch; LED doesn't do anything unless you draw a Mystical Tutor, Brainstorm, or Infernal Tutor to go with it; Mystical Tutor won't let you play another protection spell for 2 turns unless you hit another land/lotus petal before playing it; and Cabal Ritual is worthless for going off protected unless you hit another mana source)

Ponder enables more functionality with LED (setting potential Ad Nauseams as the 2nd card with Ponder then break LED on your next upkee) and lets you play with classes of cards. In this hand you need two major things:

2-4 Additional Mana to go off protected
1 Bomb

With Ponder, your bomb is any of Infernal Tutor, Mystical Tutor, or Ad Nauseam. With Ponder, your potential additional mana is anything except Chrome Mox and Cabal Ritual, with the Cabal Ritual restriction being far more likely to be removed than in the situation with Duress/Ad Nauseam replacing Ponders/Tops.

[Kuma]

Ponder into Mystical Tutor gives you Ad Nauseam next turn (Mystical Tutor on your upkeep).

I assume we're talking about a first turn Ponder on the play like I described. In that case you'd need either a Chrome Mox or a Lotus Petal to Ponder into Mystical, play Mystical, and Draw Ad Nauseum on turn two. Even if you do this, you've only got three or four cards to cast and protect Ad Nauseum on turn two. Not only is Ponder slow, getting Ad Nauseum with it less probable than simply having it in your hand with the Duress/Ad Nauseum setup and you don't have to spend time and mana to get it.


Ponder enables more functionality with LED (setting potential Ad Nauseams as the 2nd card with Ponder then break LED on your next upkee) and lets you play with classes of cards. In this hand you need two major things:

I have no idea which hand you're talking about, which makes it hard to answer most of your post, but anyway...

We already have eight ways to do the LED upkeep trick, four Mystical Tutor and four Brainstorm. I'm not a fan of casting Ad Nauseum that way, because you're looking at a maximum of two storm before Ad Nauseum and you're forced to start flipping with an empty hand, increasing the chances of a "Bad Nauseum".

Being methods 9 - 11 for doing the LED upkeep trick is a very minor point in Ponder's favor, and not worth the decreased probability of drawing protection and Ad Nauseum.