How many lands do you need to best utilize Mox Diamond?

[FoolofaTook]

I've been trying to figure out what the right number is to be able to effectively use Mox Diamond. 21 is definitely a bit low. I want to go on the bleeding edge with it and be able to power it and also make the first two land drops 95% of the time.

23 or 24?

[Ch@os]

My experience is 24.

[FoolofaTook]

My experience is 24.

Do you feel comfortable with 24 or is that bleeding edge for you?

[Cavius The Great]

I'd say 25 is the magic number. Anything less and you're risking it. Even 24 is a bit low from my experience. @FooloftheTook - Why don't you just playtest?

[Afro]

24-26. 25 is probably the correct number however. Also depends on what type of deck your running. If you run cycling lands with the loam engine I have no problem going the high end on 26. Testing usually gives you the correct feel in the deck your using.

[zulander]

24 for the aggro loam build I'm using. I think 25 is optimal.

[from Cairo]

24-26. 25 is probably the correct number however. Also depends on what type of deck your running. If you run cycling lands with the loam engine I have no problem going the high end on 26. Testing usually gives you the correct feel in the deck your using.

Agree with this, 24 seems minimum for supporting a playset. And as Afro points out, running cyclers makes a higher number reasonable.

[FoolofaTook]

I'd say 25 is the magic number. Anything less and you're risking it. Even 24 is a bit low from my experience. @FooloftheTook - Why don't you just playtest?

Playtesting is a notoriously inaccurate way to determine if something is optimal or suboptimal. If I could play a thousand games that'd be different, but playing 60 is not going to give me a great feel for this kind of issue.

Asking a community of 100+ people what they think is optimal is much more reliable because I can parse their answers, based largely on their play experience with the card, and come up with a reasonable range.

What the thread so far is telling me is that 24 lands is probably the bleeding edge I am looking for in terms of playing Mox Diamond.

[Sims]

Generally I like to have 24/25 as the edge with Mox Diamond, I never would go below that.

Bovi: What is it with you and trashing any deck or card that you don't play? I don't recall someone elevating you to the level of Legacy Diety. You may not necessarily like or play Loam decks but that doesn't relegate them to being bad decks.

[Bovinious]

Bovi: What is it with you and trashing any deck or card that you don't play? I don't recall someone elevating you to the level of Legacy Diety. You may not necessarily like or play Loam decks but that doesn't relegate them to being bad decks.

Lets examine some data shall we? Here is the post from the DTBF, the most recent update.


February Update

The most recent 10 tournies with 33 or more players:

12/30/07 - Ancient Memory #31, Akihabara, Japan
1/5/08 - Paris, France
1/5/08 - Syracuse, NY, USA
1/13/08 - Udine, Italy
1/19/08 - Hadley, Mass, USA
1/20/08 - Cremona, Italy
1/20/08 - Hassloch, Germany
1/20/08 - Iserlohn, Germany
1/26/08 - 3rd Running GAGG, Geneseo, NY, USA
1/27/08 - Ancient Memories #32, Akihabara, Japan

3 USA
2 Germany
2 Italy
2 Japan
1 France

*Changes in Italics

IN
DTB
Threshold – 12 (variants include 5 UGR, 3 UGW, UGWB, UGRW, 2 Trinket Thresh)
Goblins– 10 (splashes include 4 W, 3 No splash, 2 B, G)
Landstill – 6 (colors include 4 BHWC (4C), UWb, 1 UWR)
BWG Rock - 6

DTW
DragonStompy - 4
Ichorid - 3
Aluren -3
Deadguy -3

ATW
Landstill – 6
Rock Variants - 6
Survival – 5

OUT
Armaggedon Stax - 2
Cephalid Breakfast – 1
CRET Belcher – 1
TES - 1
Burn - 0
Aggro Loam - 0
Life from the Loam – 0

Other Decks with more than 1 showing
Gro - 2
Fish - 2
Fairie Stompy - 2
Trinket Nought variants - 5!
Enchantress - 2
Goyf Sligh - 2

So it would appear that my analysis of the performance of LFTL decks and other Mox Diamond containing decks is not unwarranted, the only deck there that has Mox Diamond is Armageddon Stax...and that deck is not very good or widely played/successful as we all know, or should know :wink:

To me the question was almost like if I asked "O hay guys, how many white cards do I need to support Sunscour??", since no good decks play Sunscour its a pretty pointless question. See what I mean?

[Arsenal]

What I need to ask is why are you playing Mox Diamond in the first place? To my knowledge its not in any good decks...

Some Loam variants run it, some Stax builds run it. It sees play in a smattering of decks. Not in the uber-tier 1 decks, but it still sees play enough to discuss it.

[mercenarybdu]

I'd stick in a combo or loam deck to make it into my full advantage. Otherwise I'd rather not use it.

[Cavius The Great]

I'd say 25 is the magic number.


25 is probably the correct number however.


I think 25 is optimal.




What the thread so far is telling me is that 24 lands is probably the bleeding edge I am looking for in terms of playing Mox Diamond.

Learn to read. Everyone is telling you 25.

[emidln]

I've played as few as 20 in an aggro-control deck with Wastelands. The idea there was that Mox Diamond was an accelerant to my two drops and a mana fixer. I didn't really need more than 3 mana sources on the table, and I really wanted 2 my first turn. Chrome Mox would have been better except that I needed to produce three colors of mana consistently.

On the reverse side of this coin, I usually play 25 lands minimum in ancient tomb/city of traitors decks packing mox diamond. These decks, mostly stax variants, are very mana hungry and want to hit their first 5 or so land drops unaided by Crucible fo Worlds or Life from the Loam. During testing, I noticed that 25 was too low even for that, but that 4x Crucible allowed me to ignore the problems for the most part. Without access to a lot of Loam or Crucible effects, I would consider 26 the minimum in a control deck. With Loam or Crucible, 25. If you are trying to fit Mox Diamond into an aggro deck, it really depends on what you want to do. The deck I referenced first was a Deadguy-esque deck that played Duress/Hymn/Vindicate/Meddling Mage/STP/Confidant/Stifle/Brainstorm/Exalted Angel/Wasteland. I never needed more than 3 mana to play any of my spells, and 4 mana was only for flipping a morphed angel (which was more than doable by turn 4-5 when I was normally trying to do it).

[Zilla]

Learn to read. Everyone is telling you 25.
Note to Self: Do not flame anyone!
He specified that he wants bleeding edge. Although this is a slight misusage of terms on his part (it means the most advanced state of technology), I believe the point he's trying to make is that he wants to play the bare minimum number of lands he can get away with, and what people are saying in this thread is that that number is 24, where the optimal number is 25.

[Tacosnape]

Because no thread such as this is complete without a little hyperbole, technically the correct answer is 56. You just won't have much of a chance of winning with those Mox Diamonds you can consistently drop.

From what you're saying, you want to be able to consistently drop a first turn Mox Diamond and then still have a second land drop to curve into three mana. Which means essentially you want to see a minimum of 3 lands in your first 8 cards (9 on the draw, but 7 if you mulligan, so whatever, we'll say 8.)

22.5 Lands (Or 23, since we can't run half-lands) is how many you would need to run to see 3 or more land in your first 8 cards 50% of the time. As 50% is well short of your stated 95% goal (Which is unreasonably high), I would suggest running 26 if it's absolutely crucial you get that third drop on your second turn.

If, however, this is a Life From The Loam deck, where you can cheat your chances of getting that second land drop with a turn one Loam, then I'd suggest running 24-25. 24 if all 4 Loams are maindeck, 25 if you maindeck 3 or less.

[Xero]

To me the question was almost like if I asked "O hay guys, how many white cards do I need to support Sunscour??", since no good decks play Sunscour its a pretty pointless question. See what I mean?


Loam decks suck so much they were only in the DTB Forum from July until Janurary. I hate all those shitty decks that consistently do well. :rolleyes:

[Tacosnape]

Loam decks suck so much they were only in the DTB Forum from July until Janurary. I hate all those shitty decks that consistently do well. :rolleyes:

Yeah I know. I mean, decks based on draw engines that evade countermagic and discard are such shit.:cool:

[Iranon]

I just looked through my decklists and noticed soomething that may be be of interest: The only decks in which I've been satisfied with 24 lands + 4 Mox Diamonds have been colourless; otherwise the land count was higher.

Of course it, it might theoretically depend on other factors (how many lands are disposable, do you want a linear acceleration of your deck or do to really push for that turn-1 Trinisphere etc) but that's been the only constant through all decks as far as the number of Mox Diamonds were concerned.

[FoolofaTook]

I just looked through my decklists and noticed soomething that may be be of interest: The only decks in which I've been satisfied with 24 lands + 4 Mox Diamonds have been colourless; otherwise the land count was higher.

Of course it, it might theoretically depend on other factors (how many lands are disposable, do you want a linear acceleration of your deck or do to really push for that turn-1 Trinisphere etc) but that's been the only constant through all decks as far as the number of Mox Diamonds were concerned.

That's interesting. I'd been looking at Mox Diamond as an enabler of 3 color aggro/control under the assumption that the vulnerability to Blood Moon would be lessened. It sounds like that may not be the case based on your experience.

[Jourdelune]

Loam decks suck so much they were only in the DTB Forum from July until Janurary. I hate all those shitty decks that consistently do well. :rolleyes:

Let's see the aggro-controler loamer playtest Countryside Crusher with morningtide.

Countryside Crusher
Color= Red Type= Creature - Giant Warrior Cost= 1RR MT(R)
Text (MT): 3/3. ; At the beginning of your upkeep, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it into your graveyard and repeat this process. ; Whenever a land card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, put a +1/+1 counter on ~this~.

Seismic Assault, anyone? ;)
Any discard outlet like wild mongrel to get the best friend of the Countryside?
What about the synergy with Terravore?

Wizards gives some bones to the loamer peoples and yet, the spark of testing it was merely look at on MWS meta actually (if we can say MWS has a meta).



On topics, I had tried a 2 Mox Diamond, 2 Chrome mox cut earlier.

Sometimes either of them shine best. Mox diamond is better mid game (less CA loose, land do nothing at that point) and the Chrome Mox better for the firsts turn (with gold cards of your colors need) if you need the acceleration. But that is, without Loam or crucible engine on a 19 Lands based test with 7 golds cards packed in the deck.


Jourdelune

[Raider Bob]

Optimal would be 56, cause then you could always use them. The issue with MOx Diamond and why Chrome Mox is played over the diamond is this. MOst decks run 24 land and 36 spells if you up the mana count to 28 or 29 if your playing mox diamond your buisness spells get cut down to 31. Now if you use that formula with Chrome MOx you can run 20 lands and 4 chrome mox and you will have 36 buisness spells to imprint on the mox so it is usually not a dead draw.

Taking all of this into consideration, in my playtesting I have had the best success with 26 lands and if you want the bare minimum to make it possible you can probably cut it down to 24.

[FoolofaTook]

Optimal would be 56, cause then you could always use them. The issue with MOx Diamond and why Chrome Mox is played over the diamond is this. MOst decks run 24 land and 36 spells if you up the mana count to 28 or 29 if your playing mox diamond your buisness spells get cut down to 31. Now if you use that formula with Chrome MOx you can run 20 lands and 4 chrome mox and you will have 36 buisness spells to imprint on the mox so it is usually not a dead draw.

Taking all of this into consideration, in my playtesting I have had the best success with 26 lands and if you want the bare minimum to make it possible you can probably cut it down to 24.

The reason I'm not looking hard at Chrome Mox is that it is a much weaker topdeck after the first few turns and I have an extraordinary aversion to throwing a Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Cabal Therapy or similar spell away on turn 1 to get mana tempo. Throwing away the more costly spells to enable a Chrome Mox diminishes the value of having the extra mana, right?

I agree on the point about Mox Diamond creating extreme pressure on the spell end of the equation, which is why I'm trying to figure out what minimum number of lands can be run with it, but I am much less happy with the prospect of throwing away guaranteed business on turn 1 than with the prospect of drawing a land later when I wanted something better.

From the responses in the thread it seems that everybody thinks 25 is the comfortable number of lands to run, creating 31 spells. I think that means I want to run 24 lands and 32 spells.

[Lego]

I ran 19 lands and 4 Mox Diamond once with no problems. It all depends on what you're trying to do with them.

[FoolofaTook]

I ran 19 lands and 4 Mox Diamond once with no problems. It all depends on what you're trying to do with them.

I'm considering going 22 lands so that I can add in 4 Dark Rituals also and leave a 50/50 spell mix with the mana. The composition I'm looking at doesn't have quite the oomph for that though. If I'm going to run 8 accelerators I need to have probably a dozen ways to go broken on turn 1 off of fast mana and a big fast creature doesn't qualify in this meta.

[BreathWeapon]

In Aggro-Loam, 23 is the minimum for Mox Diamond, tho' Gamble->Life from the Loam and Sensei's Divining Top helps a lot.