The 61-card special strikes again. #GetThereQuote:
Originally Posted by jbone2016
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The 61-card special strikes again. #GetThereQuote:
Originally Posted by jbone2016
Not to detract from the really detailed analysis/theorycrafting going on in this thread right now (which is great), but I've been thinking about the more land-centric lists, that maybe run Titania, Sylvan Safekeeper, Tireless Tracker, and very likely KotR. There's three utility lands that I've seen to a fair extent in Nic Fit lists: Karakas, Phyrexian Tower, and Volrath's Stronghold. In a list running KotR, are there any other utility lands that might be worth running alongside a GSZable land tutor, or does nothing else particularly contribute to the gameplan? For a short period of time I ran Prime Time as one of my finishers, but never really felt he did that much work.
Might more utility lands be worth being considered, or does the deck at that point just become a weird Lands/Fit hybrid? Outside of price constraints, I feel like a Tabernacle in the side would work well for a lands-focused list, and Riftstone Portal offers mana fixing.
We haven't found any yet, but feel free to look for them yourself. It'd be a very welcome addition.Quote:
Originally Posted by CruelOptimist
I have to disagree on Tabernacle. Creatures aren't something we have trouble dealing with, so why bother taxing those? Besides, the decks that drop creatures we do have trouble with typically don't mind paying 1-2 mana to keep their Emrakul/Griselbrand/Kozilek alive for 1 or 2 turns. Tabernacle unfortunately does not solve any problems we may have.
The deck also doesn't need Riftstone Portal - the manabase is stable as it is (in its many configurations).
@Bobmans: Fetch should count as all 3 colours. If worst comes to pass, you can always fetch up a dual. I tend to fetch basics as much as possible.
@Jain: Sorry, I forgot to update the viable cards list. You really did put up some good stuff. I like the idea of manland, especially if we want to play around with Courser & Tracker more! Great idea!
@everyone: C'mon people. Finisher sets, 12 pure finishers & 3 finisher + CA/interaction double duty cards. This is the point where we start to form our own, individual lists that uphold the numbers we came up with as much as possible. A major point of Systems Engineering is evaluating your requirements and changing them if needed. After that, you evaluate if what you've built still holds up to your requirements etc. What we're working towards now is putting together that initial complete list after which we evaluate if it satisfies the requirements we've set up.
@Echelon, I did answer your question about finishers at the end of my post, you must have missed it :P
Yeah, I did. I'm having trouble keeping up with this thread at the moment, lol. So what you're saying is that you want to start with the CA/library manipulation and removal/interaction suites. I can dig that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jain_Mor
New plan people. Scratch the bit about the finishers-chunk. We're starting with how-to-survive-long-enough and how-to-find-the-stuff-we-need-to-get-there.
16 slots worth of interaction/removal, 16 slots worth of CA/library manipulation. 3 of those should double as finisher to uphold the distribution as set out until now.
I understand the naming of a ramp-portion, but that does make putting together a list even more difficult as it needs us to really critically evaluate each and every card. We could give it a go, but maybe we should revisit the distributions. Probably something like this:
21-22 land
14 ramp (ideally you want 1 in every opener so you can start pulling ahead ASAP)
16 library manipulation/CA
16 interaction/removal
15 finishers
For the 38-39 slots we have, we want to have 61 cards worth of distribution to reliably hit them all. That means that in the 38-39 slots we have, we need 22-23 cards to pull double (or less if some can do triple - looking at you, DRS) duty. Now that sounds like a fun challenge. We may want to count Phyrexian Tower as an entire or 0.5 ramp.
If we're doing this, I say we set these numbers as hard boundaries that we must adhere to. You guys up for this?
I'm adding another requirement to our model:
- Ramp slots may not cost >2 mana (this means Sakura-Tribe Elder is IN and Wood Elves is OUT)
With regards to finishers - how many answers do we expect to have to fight through? If we are agreeing to disregard Miracles as unwinnable except via sideboard tech, then the most removal in lists as far as actual serious interaction goes is probably something along the lines of 12 cards. I'm thinking something along the lines of three or so from FoW/Snap/Therapy/Seize/Swords.
With that in mind, unless we want to improve our matchup against Miracles pre-board, we probably only need about 14/15 threats. Of those I think we're locked in on this as a minimum :
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
2 Siege Rhino
1 Tireless Tracker
2-3 Deathrite Shaman
--
10-11
The last 3-5 cards are probably where changes happen:
2-3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of X and Y
+2 Siege Rhino
0-1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
0-1 Thragtusk
0-1 Recurring Nightmare
(some package involving KotR goes here but I don't know what it is)
@Navsi: I forgot who it was, but someone concluded that the current DtB section runs a combination of 30-ish threats and answers so to be on equal footing with that we concluded we needed to at least mirror those numbers. Hypergeometric distribution showed us that 16 removal/interaction was the optimal number to have between 1 and 3 in our opening 7, so that indeed leaves us with at least 14 threats to match the 30 we can expect to face. Add 1 for good luck and that's 15.
Once again you're spot on, my good sir :smile:.
I think we can agree that GSZ is both ramp (X = 1 gets us Veteran Explorer), library manipulation and finisher. This means that with 4 slots we still need to fill the following:
6 ramp
16 interaction/removal
12 CA/library manipulation
10-11 finisher.
Conservatively, we can also agree that DRS is at least both ramp and finisher. Adding 3 of those leaves us wanting for:
3 ramp
16 interaction/removal
12 CA/library manipulation
7-8 finisher.
And the following list, so far:
21-22 land
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Deathrite Shaman
38-39 slots worth in 27-28 available slots.
I choose to run 2 Phyrexian Tower, counting them as 0.5 ramp each. So that's
19-20 land
2 Phyrexian Tower
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Deathrite Shaman
32-33 slots worth in 24-25 available slots, divided in:
2 ramp
16 interaction/removal
12 CA/library manipulation
7-8 finisher.
You added in 4 Veteran explorer without counting it as using any Ramp slots.
39 slots (ramp: 10, interaction: 15, filter: 15, finisher: 15)
- 4 Green Sun's Zenith
- 3 Deathrite Shaman
32 slots (ramp: 3, interaction: 15, filter: 11, finisher: 8)
- 3 Veteran Explorer
29 slots (interaction: 15, filter: 11, finisher: 8)
- 4 Therapy
- 3 Deed
- 6 Path + Decay
- 1 Vindicate
15 slots (interaction: 1, filter: 11, finisher: 8)
- 3 Sensei's Divining Top
- 1 Painful Truths
- 1 Tireless Tracker
- 1 Eternal Witness
9 slots (interaction: 1, filter: 5, finisher: 7)
- 2 Siege Rhino
- 1 Sigarda
6 final slots (interaction: 1, filter: 5, finisher: 4)
At this point I think these six are our actual flex slots. They mostly want to be finishers which also generate card advantage, so probably either a Stoneforge package or a Meren setup. Since we're still a little low on filtering/draw, we might want one of these slots to be another card advantage engine along the lines of Sylvan Library or a second Painful Truths.
For reference, the 54 card list:
3 Veteran Explorer
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tireless Tracker
2 Siege Rhino
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Path to Exile
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Painful Truths
1 Vindicate
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
2 Arid Mesa
2 Bayou
2 Scrubland
1 Savannah
3 Forest
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold OR second Phyrexian Tower
15G/14B/14W, all cards castable with basics.
No, I didn't. Look at the new distribution a few posts back :wink:. I upped the desired ramp count to 14. Consistency is what we want, so that's what we'll have to aim for. 14 is the bare minimum for if you want 1 of something in your opener for sure-ish, as is reflected in our manabase.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
Also, you're lowering numbers. Interaction/removal and library manipulation/CA should both be @16, otherwise we're not upholding our requirements :wink:.
As Hayao Miyazaki wrote on the note that accompanied the katana he sent to Harvey Weinstein - "No cuts".
I don't think more than 10 ramp is doable. With 10 cards we still have 75% odds of getting a ramp card in our opener. Can go to 11 if we count Phyrexian Tower as +0.5.
Adding the fourth Veteran Explorer, assuming 11 cards (4 gsz / 3 drs / 3 vet / 2 tower) previously:
- increases odds of getting a ramp card in opener from 78% to 80%.
- increases odds of drawing a third Vet in top 15 cards from 1.3% to 4.5%.
IMO we win more games where we started with 0 ramp cards than we do where we drew three Explorers. Hard to find numbers for that though.
So we want a ramp card that is also a tutor/filter, interaction, finisher or something like that.
I don't think there are any good options here.
- Traverse the Ulvenwald- while this might be a filter/finisher I don't think it's ramp because we're unlikely to hit Delirium before turn four.
- Warping Wail: awful for the manabase, bad removal.
- Crop Rotation: might be the best option, finds Tower which is nice, but is card disadvantage and we probably need better effects to get it to work.
- Nissa: doesn't actually ramp, but if you want to count her as ramping then sure.
- Courser: also doesn't actually ramp, probably straight worse than Nissa unless you're playing Arbor and Volrath's stronghold (and where do we get the slot for Arbor from?)
Nissa and Courser also cost 3 mana which you ruled out earlier.
I just don't think it's going to be possible to get above 11 ramp targets without impacting the deck in other ways, unless we want to play Summoner's Pact, which feels awful.
Edit:
With the list I put up earlier we're on:
Ramp: 10 (12 with towers)
Finisher: 11
Interaction: 14
Filter/Draw/Tutor: 10
with 6 flex slots (7 if we go to 61).
So if we want to get to 14/15/16/16 we are looking at playing something like:
1 abzan charm (interaction, draw)
1 nissa (draw, ramp)
1 courser (draw, ramp)
2 stoneforge (tutor, finisher)
1 batterskull (finisher)
1 sword of fire and ice (draw, interaction, finisher)
That puts on 61 cards with 14 mana cards, 15 finishers, 16 interaction and 16 card selection. However to fill the multiple roles we're running lower powered catchalls (i.e. Nissa, Courser, Abzan Charm) rather than cards more effective at their individual roles (i.e. third stoneforge, jitte, more rhino, thoughtseize, or second Truths). Not sure if it's worth it for the 16th Removal and Filtering slots.
Nissa's CMC > 2, Nissa may not be considered as ramp.
Courser of Kruphix's CMC > 2, Courser may not be considered as ramp.
Let us try first, before writing this off. We're a couple of smart bastards, we can do this.
There just aren't the cards. Unless we get a functional reprint of Green Sun's Zenith, I don't think there is a playable source of ramp we aren't already running which is cheap enough and still relevant after turn three. Unless someone wants to playtest Explore?
No balls, no glory man. I believe I've mentioned Exploration before. It's one of the cards I'd love to play. Late game it still has some value when combined with Courser of Kruphix and library manipulation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
Besides, with my setup I only needed to fill 2 more slots with ramp. That shouldn't be impossible. Go to 4 DRS and add a STE and you're there.
4 GSZ
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Phyrexian Tower for 1 ramp
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
Makes 13, with 34-35 slots worth in 25-26 available slots, divided in:
16 interaction/removal
12 CA/library manipulation
6-7 finisher
to go.
We can and will do this.
That being said, to do this we will have to accept that we'll be making some choices we normally wouldn't, awkward as they may feel. It isn't about what we want or what we like, it's about the goal we set out to achieve.
Edit: Cabal Therapy is an auto-include since we can't function without it. Might as well include it in the list so far.
21-22 lands (I'm on the fence on this one. Running 22 land to include a seventh basic might be nice, considering the amount of ramp we run)
4 GSZ
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Phyrexian Tower for 1 ramp
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Cabal Therapy
Makes 18, with 30-31 slots worth in 18-19 available slots, divided in:
12 interaction/removal
12 CA/library manipulation
6-7 finisher
to go.
This isn't really possible. Most of our interaction is single-slot. Even if you put in 4 multi-slot interaction like Abzan Charm and the remaining 8 are single slot, we still have 6 slots left after filling Interaction with which to make 8 CA/filtering cards and 6-7 finishers.Quote:
Makes 18, with 30-31 slots worth in 18-19 available slots, divided in:
12 interaction/removal
12 CA/library manipulation
6-7 finisher
to go.
Running 5 mono-ramp spells (4 vet 1 STE) gives us 10% odds of getting 3+ in our top 15, and only increases our odds of getting a ramp opener from 75% (with 10 cards) to 81% (with 12). I don't think that's worth it.
Phyrexian Tower can't be counted for the 'ramp card in opener' maths because it only ramps us if we have a creature to sacrifice to it, and that means we already have a vet/drs/gsz. None of our other creatures can be sacrificed to Tower before turn 3 without aid from vet/drs.
Exploration looks fine, it does get a lot better when we have Tireless Tracker in the deck. It is a terribad topdeck in a lot of situations though - Vet can at least attack and block, Exploration doesn't do anything at all if we don't have more lands in hand than we should. Explore at least replaces itself.
If we want to make the deck more resistant to variance and mathematically better at getting what we want, when we want it, then I don't think increasing our number of do-nothing cards past turn three is the way to go about it.
Some more maths:
If we have the basic 10 ramp cards we have a 84% chance of getting one or more in our first 8 cards.
We have an 91% chance of getting a ramp card or an SDT in our opening hand.
If we have an SDT, we get to see more cards - the top 3 cards have a 47% chance of containing ramp, or 72% if we have a shuffle. If we keep hands which have Top but no Ramp (which happen ~7% of the time), we get a ramp card immediately half the time. This increases our odds of Ramp by turn two to ~87%.
I don't think we need to go to 14 ramp sources. The thing with the mana source comparison is that we have to mulligan a hand which doesn't contain G.
I'd keep a hand of Forest, Fetch, Fetch, Scrubland, Path, Stoneforge, Truths. It's not optimal, sure, but it's not like we have to ship a hand back just because it doesn't have a Veteran, Deathrite or Zenith in it. Especially with all the filtering tools we are running, it's not the end of the world if we don't get it.
I think you need to go under 10 ramp, as Navsi stated. My current setup is:
4 vet
2 Drs
1 Sakura
I don't want any other dedicated guys whose sole purpose is ramping me. You can argue GSZ counts as ramp #8-11 here, but it's a multifunction card. It isn't locked into giving me only ramp. Zenith can start the game acting as ramp only to transform into a threat the longer the game goes. I can't do the math, but to me this setup is ideal to begin the game with (also factor in your manabase). I kept drawing ramp/nothing when running additional guys (incl our 3cc friends). The only exception I'd make at this time is my girl KOTR. But she's optionally ramping you. She's more versatile.
We can also run a Dryad Arbor to turn GSZ into a T1 ramp card.
I think we can get closer than you think. Tireless Tracker, Eternal Witness & Courser of Kruphix can be considered both CA & finisher. Sweepers are part CA, part removal/interaction since you aim to play those when they take out more of your opponents' cards than yours. And maybe we'll have to play some stuff we currently don't run.
Don't let the "We can't do it b/c we normally run X and Y" mentality blind you man. If we look at it that way we could just as well have not done this thing at all.
Aren't we planning to add cards like SDT to make sure we shuffle away the stuff we don't need later in the game? Especially when combined with stuff like GSZ, KotR and a shitload of fetchlands..? Don't like the top 3 cards of your library? Dig up a fetchland with KotR, check again. Still don't like it? Crack that fetch, try again.
@Warden: If you look a bit more closely to what I've been doing, you'll see that I didn't peg GSZ as just ramp. I also classified it as CA/library manipulation and finisher, filling 12 needed slots with just 4 cards.
If we stick to the higher number of ramp slots, I think we can stretch the no > 5 CMC cards requirement to no >6 CMC cards. This gives us access again to big Sorin, which can be viewed as removal, CA & finisher. Biggest sellingpoint for Sorin to me is the fact that he doesn't give a shit about Terminus/StP, which is normally one of our known weak points and something we really need to fix.
I don't consider Deed and Deluge to fit there. They're 'Card Advantage' but they don't let us deal with the main reason we have that section of the deck, which is lack of Brainstorm. They don't let us get what we need out of our deck or shuffle away dead draws we've seen with Top.
Even if we do count Deed and Deluge, we'll still need to use some more of our remaining 8 removal/interaction effects on other areas as well. We already went through the available options before, and the best removal option which doubled up in the other areas was Abzan Charm, which we've agreed is probably subpar. If you run 2-3 Abzan Charms we can probably get to a list which fills all the gaps, but I don't know if the card quality will be up to scratch. We'll be sacrificing a lot of sheer power for card versatility. I'd rather lose strength in other areas (consistency of the ramp plan) than in our ability to interact and filter our deck.
The other versatile removal/interaction options would be planeswalkers - Garruk (removal/finisher), Obnix (removal/draw) and Sorin (removal/draw/finisher). I think that's definitely a place to look, particularly if you're playing those large numbers of ramp cards to actually cast your 5-6 drops.
Basically, we can choose one of four options:
- Weaken our card advantage engines, reducing the consistency of our draws (play ramp and removal)
- Weaken our ramping options, reducing our power play percentages (play removal and draw effects)
- Weaken our removal options, increasing our odds of getting run over before we can interact (play ramp and draw)
- Run multi-option cards which fulfil all roles but at a lower power level, reducing the overall strength of the deck (play Abzan Charm and similar effects).
Well... Most decks only run 4 Brainstorm and 4 Ponder as card selection suite, so that makes 8 CA/library manipulation cards we want to specifically mimic that role. We have 4 in SDT, but I'm not sure if GSZ fills the other 4 (it will get you the creature you need but cannot get you the removal you need, outside of Eternal Witness shenanigans). That means the other 8 can be multifunctional cards.
Just to be clear - I absolutely agree with what you're saying. I just want to take this experiment as far as possible, to see just how far we can stretch the limits of what we can accomplish.
I like the mentioning of Planeswalkers. It might just be the thing we need. They're sure as hell good in the Miracles MU so we might end up winning some terrain there.
Looking at what slots we still have to fill, we possibly end up with a list that does not contain Siege Rhino or Sigarda. Yes, I really did just say that. This'll be interesting. *Don't shoot the messenger*
Updating the list:
19-20 lands
2 Phyrexian Tower for 1 ramp slot
4 GSZ
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
Makes 21, with 21-22 slots worth in 18-19 available slots, divided in:
8 interaction/removal
8 CA/library manipulation
5-6 finisher
to go.
So that's 3/4 more cards to go that carry at least a double function. The last 14-16 cards are a free for all (as long as they hit the needed categories)! Maybe Sigarda will make it after all.
consistency cards are normally multifunctional with the exception of Top/Truths. I consider Witness to be pretty much solely in that category as well. Removal and Finishers, though, are often more focused. We're going to have to play finishers no matter what if we want to actually end games, so those slots are probably not going to change (and 1 of them is going to be sigarda).
We don't have enough slots to take everything without overlap.
- Ramp cards - no good overlapping options - either need to play less (go to ~10-11) or cut in other areas
- CA engines - several good multifunctional options, but the best ones (top, truths, witness) are focused. Other options are usually harder on the mana curve too
- Removal - the good choices are either single-mode (path etc) or high in mana cost (walkers, abzan charm).
I think there will be two or three potential builds out of this - one with ~13-14 ramp effects and high mana cost spells, like planeswalkers, which leans more on Deed, and one with fewer ramp spells (i.e. ~10) with a leaner curve which runs a more creature heavy plan involving Stoneforge and more spot removal spells. Maybe a build somewhere in the middle which drops the Stoneforges for Meren, more Rhinos, and other efficient creatures?
The common slots from the decks I'm expecting:
21-22 lands
6-10 ramp cards from:
2-4 vet
2-4 drs
0-1 ste
0-1 arbor
10-12 library manipulation cards from:
4 gsz
3 top
1-2 truths
1-2 witness
0-1 sylvan library
0-1 tracker
0-1 nissa
0-1 courser
13-16 interaction cards from:
4 therapy
3 deed
2-4 path
2-3 decay
0-2 abzan charm
1 vindicate variant
5-7 wincon cards from:
1 sigarda
4-6 finisher of choice (3+ also library manipulation, 0-3 also interaction)
@Navsi: I just edited my post. I'm getting positive that we're going to make it. We may even be able to go down to 3 DRS if we accept Dryad Arbor as a ramp card.
I also fixed some counting errors in a number of my posts. Turns out counting past 10 is a difficult thing to do. Sorry about that.
I'll be continuing tomorrow.