[Deck] Canadian Threshold (aka RUG Delver, Tempo Thresh)

What do you think of this recent list by Steve Mann http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=77678

Creatures
4 Delver
4 Swiftspear
3 Goyf
3 Pyromancer

Instants/Sorceries
4 Force
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Treasure Cruise
2 Daze
2 Forked Bolt
2 Pyroblast

Lands
4 Scalding Tarn
3 polluted Delta
3 Misty
1 island
1 tropical island
4 volcanic island

Sideboard
1 needle
1 izzet Staticaster
1 goyf
2 vortex
1 grudge
1 electrickery
1 envelop
2 hydroblast
2 pyroblast
2 spell pierce
1 forked bolt

Personally I think it looks really weak. I mean all he's using green for is goyf which is definitely worth it, but seems not worthwhile for just goyf. In addition with the light green spell count having only one green mana source to cast it off of seems bad. I could see 3 volc 2 trop split with a list that ditched goose for swiftspear (again something that seems bad to me), but only 1 green source really?
It just looks like UR cruise Delver with goyf smashed in it. Why run goyf if you're playing UR delver and can afford to go with a more basic mana base and have Price of Progress which will probably do at least 1 goyf hit which is all you really need when running a fast UR list.
In all it just seems like a UR delver cruise list stretched for added goyf support. I could see add goose because the bin will get filled fast and a 3/3 for 1 with shroud is a thing I hear, but there's the non-bo with cruise to worry about. Anyways food for thought I might try to look up his matches and watch it in a day or so.

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Originally Posted by sawatarix

I just saw Lam Phans Landstilldeck in the top8 of GP NY which is a tempodeck (!) and i was wondering if there is a way to build a *better* tempo-landstill deck

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For whats worth, Lam is a regular at my local. Lam's deck is not a tempo deck. He'll tell you that himself. All his threats are lands, which is inherently not tempo BC you can only play one land a turn. The power of the deck is the ability to run pyroclams which is so good right now against so many match ups.

What is usually the plan of attack against ANT? I'm going to be playtesting myself to get a better idea, but I figured I would ask so that I generally know what to expect.

My current list is the traditional stock list with the flex spots being 2x Gitaxian Probe, 2x Forked Bolt, and 2x Spell Pierce.

Here is my current SB (this will prob change based off my meta, but I liked it so far):
It is Nick Johnson's board:
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Null Rod
2 Grim Lavamancer
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Hydroblast
1 Krosan Grip
2 Pyroblast
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Rough

EDIT: is Null Rod simply for Top? Playing in my lgs it didn't really help much against equipment (at least not batterskull).

Null rod is for:

-jitte
-led
-Lotus petal
-Æther vial
-top
-sword of X and Y
-chrome mox
-mox Diamond

Its just so good vs storm

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Originally Posted by Que

What is usually the plan of attack against ANT? I'm going to be playtesting myself to get a better idea, but I figured I would ask so that I generally know what to expect.

My current list is the traditional stock list with the flex spots being 2x Gitaxian Probe, 2x Forked Bolt, and 2x Spell Pierce.

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The plan is to play 2 Snare instead of GPs. :tongue:

I sb out two FBs and one LB, then I cut some number of crappy creatures (Goyf vs. NM depending on draw/play) to make room for:
- 2 Grafidgger's Cage that stop PiF
- 3 Pyroblassts to hinder their cantripping
- 2 FLusterstorms for obvious reasons
- at least one Rough to lackluster (or cantrip) into it if goblins show up.

You basically play the heavy control role in first turns and once you're on three colored mana, you land your threat, otp you may play it a turn faster, esp. if you have some number of Dazes. Cantrip into any sort of permission, Waste lands at first sight (no need to try cut them of color, it doesnt work agaisnt deck with nine fetches and four LPs), Stifle fetchlands (as they'd CT/Duress you before storm triggers), keep Bolts for Xantid Swarm.
Sometimes they need to destroy Cage if they cannot play the IT chain or EtW, but be prepared for anything ugly like Decay-your-Goyf or natural-ToA-from-hand.
Play cautiously but don't give them too much time. As I already wrote I prefer to lay my threat after I got my game under control (Volc open for REB/BS, Trop/fetch open for Snare/Pierce), but you need to evaluate your hand and play accordingly. If you lack reasonable hand, you may play threat asap so that you got untaped lands later when you draw some counterspells.
Look, I know it's disheartening to lose on turn1 with what would otherwise be a "hand with potential", but not every game goes like this...

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Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer

G3 was pretty intense, and I sat on one land and handful of countermagic, then I drawn a Foothills (commented by Pavel - datanaga on Source - as "this is gamebreaking draw"). I played Delver...

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...so it isn't completely silly to tap out on turn1 to lay Delver/Mongoose and then hope for more gas later.
But I mostly prefer to have one land open for Pierce/Stifle/w-e (or at least bluff the card) so that the opponent doesn't have that easy time playing solely around Daze and FoW.
Speaking of pre-board games, these are pretty often a disastrous affair, as we pack far too many dead cards (too many threats, all FBs) and our permission is light (contrary to say CB or CotV) and our zero CA tools make it often impossible to acquire enough cards before the stream of Duresses forces through a winning card. Also, the lack of lifegain kinda suck, because natural Tendrils are far easier when the storm dude is playing against an opponent that effectively starts on 18-16 life.

I know that I'm a bit too much stuck on the "threat/tempo/permission" theme, but this one is really tricky.
You need to play some creatures because if you don't apply pressure, the opponent has all the time to sculpt a winning hand, esp. preboard when he can choose w/e route he wishes to due to our inability to fight the gy and liability to IT chains or natural Tendrils.
But you also need to out-maneuver the oppoent via the usual tempo tools (andby this I mean StifleWaste), because you cannot trust your deck to win against an opponent with several lands and lots of discard. You really need to Stifle the fetches (I keep the card for strom trigger only in a desperate or in already won situations), as het will get rid of it before going off, and your soft counters work only against a mana-deprived opponents, which definitely isn't a dude firmly sitting on two basic Islands and a set of Petals.
Yet you need an open mana for when they start to threaten you, and frankly, this might happen as soon as turn1, altough more realistically: turn2.
Finding the balance between:
- laying threats and applying pressure
- keeping their options limited via mana denial
- and having mana open for permission
is quite a task. From what ideas and experiences I gathered from both sides of the fences, I'm like 100% sure that preboard this mu is in ANTs favor, while postboard it's about our particular build, ANTs tricks and sb surprises and of course, about the plan they choose or are forced into. While RUG plays still the same, storm might decide to go the gy route, win with EtW, surprise with Swarm, build the IT chain or natural Tendrils, Extirpate FoWs, chumpblock with SCM...
Also, I don't follow the ANT thread anymore, but I know that at least Slosh plays two Bolts main which are extraordinary effective against threat-light RUG deck, because both Goyf and NM are slow (one is small, the other is expensive), so killing the Delver may buy them lots of time, esp. if we've BS-ed away all the other dudes to sculpt a solid hand.

From all the less expected cards that we may sb (Cage, REBs and Flusterstorms are kinda obvious, right?), I'd say that those are solid:
Tormod's Crypt. Hinders threshold and/or flashbacks. Has some limited applications in LftL.dec matchup and is pretty solid against gy based decks. Playable?
Additional counterspells. Pierce no.3-4 or Envelop are quite solid in Miracles matchup, so I may see them in sb
Null Rod is an extremely effective card, but it comes at a price which is cmc2. But it stops all of their artifact mana, and that's pretty good especially considering the power of LED.
Surgical Extraction to mess with their gy and to gain information on their sb plan.
Vendilion Clique is a really fine card, but that's not a surprise...

Also, Cabal Therapy is a real skilltester, and if you play against a dude who knows how to play it, your chances go down accordingly. You may somehow balance this buy playing lots of unexpected cards (Envelop, Extraction or anything like that), but there's a border you cannot cross and playing say Disrupt is a bit too silly.
Unless my lgs would be 50% storm, I'd stay away from Spellstutter Sprite or Riptide Pilferer, although these are exactly the dudes I'm always itching to try out, as the one dodges Duress and the other messes with their hand.
Also... play Scavenging Ooze.

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Originally Posted by Que

What is usually the plan of attack against ANT? I'm going to be playtesting myself to get a better idea, but I figured I would ask so that I generally know what to expect.

My current list is the traditional stock list with the flex spots being 2x Gitaxian Probe, 2x Forked Bolt, and 2x Spell Pierce.

Here is my current SB (this will prob change based off my meta, but I liked it so far):
It is Nick Johnson's board:
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Null Rod
2 Grim Lavamancer
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Hydroblast
1 Krosan Grip
2 Pyroblast
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Rough

EDIT: is Null Rod simply for Top? Playing in my lgs it didn't really help much against equipment (at least not batterskull).

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Pretty much what Bed Decks Player said is on the money in terms of how to play the match up. As for that specific sideboard I would do something like the following:
+2 cage (shuts off past in flames)
Null Rod (hits LED, but similar to cage this isn't full proof. They can still go rit, rit, rit past in flames, rit, rit, rit win without having petals/LED)
+2 pyroblast
+1 extraction (hold until past in flames then hit IT and they probably won't be able to go off)
- 2 forked bolt
- 1 bolt
-3 goyf (personally I prefer cutting goyf always as the two mana just seems worse even when on the play than being able to drop a t1 threat)
I also think adding a single rough out of the board is a bit much against ANT. They tend to be more resilient and just wait to kill you with Tendrils. Now against TES I would hands down board in the 2 roughs since their main game plan against tempo is T1 or T2 dump lethal goblins.

Pretty much what Contract Killer said is on the money in terms of how to sideboard Roughs. In fact the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that while 2 Roughs are a must against TES, you don't really need them against ANT, as they'd go for the slower ToA kill most of the times, especially if you know that the player likes to use the double ToA or natural Tendrils plan.
I dislike the snail pace of NM and that it chews the hit points really slowly, otoh, there were many times where I simply couldn't play the Goyf, although it'll be an immediate 5/6. Definitely sb out the Goyfs, not Mongooses...

Thank you guys for all your advice. Very insightful. I will try to apply the strategy :)

Hello everybody,
i recently discussed watching a SCG video with some friends about starting a game with RUG delver.

When you are on the play and don't know what your opponent is playing it's sometimes difficult to choose the best way to start. For example, that seems a good hand:
delver of secrets
Spell Pierce
Brainstorm
Fetch
Wasteland
Ponder
Lightning Bolt

Knowing what tour opponent is playing is easy:

• fetch-delver against control or not winning turn 1 combos
• fetch-go against the rest to be able to :
  
  • play pierce
  • protect your only blue land against a possible wasteland
  • kill a mana curve creature like deathrite shaman at end of opponent's turn
  • playing brainstorm at end of opponent's turn if nothing before happened for better choose what to do in your next turn
  
  

If you don't know what your opponent is playing, what would be your start?
thanks and happy new year!

Being on the play, and against an unknown opponent, I would fetch volcanic, delver, go.

Early pressure is key against almost any deck. If my opp wastes my volcanic, it's ok, my delver is still alive. If my opp kills my delver, it's ok, I'll cantrip for another threat and will protect it with pierce.

What Niggurath wrote.

I find the Rough/Tumble pretty appealing in main. It's not that good to warrant say two slots, namely considering cmc2, but the fact that it takes out YP and his team, or kills any amout of Deathrites, or Mor plus dude, or several Elves is pretty solid. Any opinions?

The right Play is

fetch -> volc-> Ponder

And searching for a Daze fow and 2nd manaland. As we Only Play 14 Real lands The risk of being wasted turn 1 and dont find a 2nd Land is in too high imo. delver t1 is too high Risk vs unknown Decks because of being able to get easy knocked out the Game.

Greets

I want to see somebody wasting me after I deploy Delver of Secrets turn 1.

Greetings

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Originally Posted by Einherjer

I want to see somebody wasting me after I deploy Delver of Secrets turn 1.

Greetings

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Happens every time. With the very few lands we play, it's often a game over, although it takes a few more turns.
I'm not sure. On the one hand, this is how I very often start. On the other hand, I just now finished a game where I lost simply becasue of the "turn1 Delver" doctrine. Seems like Ponder for a second land is safe. It also depends on your metagame. Even if you're playing against an unkonwn dude, it's still not in a vacuum, it happens in some timespace. Post Khans? Everyone plays TC so I guess I'm against URx something. Silly lgs like our own? I dig for Force as there are several ppl with ANT.

Imo otp it can't be right to cast Ponder if we have Delver in hand.

The only time i would do that is, if i know i play against a rly bad player and he plays Wasteland. Cause if he Timewalks himself while we have a Delver in play that's just fine for me....
Though we do play not much lands, the blind T1 Wasteland is such a bad play i don't think any worthy opp would do that.

Reguards

E: +1 Einherjer

If you are on the play against a completely unknown opponent, definitely play Delver first. But if you have knowledge your opponent is running Wasteland and 1cc removal, hedge your bet and play Ponder first. Smart opponents know we often have to keep land-light hands, it is often your opponent's best bet to try and Waste you out of the game. If your only cantrip is Brainstorm with no Ponder, just jam Delver, Brainstorm is a lot worse than Ponder at finding your second colored source.

Excactly,don't forget that we actually want to win games with this deck ;)

thanks for your replies. fetch delver is my same play, but other colleagues would play differently like some of you.

happy new year!

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Originally Posted by apon

thanks for your replies. fetch delver is my same play, but other colleagues would play differently like some of you.

happy new year!

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pondering without a plan is in general bad practice. knowing what they are playing will help resolve the ponder more effectively. i would play delver with this hand unless i knew for certain my opponent was on a turn one combo deck

if u think delver on turn 1 is wrong, stop playin tempo
if ur opponent wastes you after turn 1 delver, thx for timewalk for free :)

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Originally Posted by blablub

if u think delver on turn 1 is wrong, stop playin tempo
if ur opponent wastes you after turn 1 delver, thx for timewalk for free :)

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This is not exactly true, although my knee-jerk reaction was "play Delver!"
An opponent that Wastelands my only land might be in fact a pretty clever. (Not even considering G. Probe that revealed my weakness.) RUG is known for its tight and greedy manabase and shaky keeps. If his hand is nothing but lands and removal, he may try to cut me of lands, effectively stopping my development at all. Next thing in line is to remove the Delver, which is especially easy considering I got no Island to pay for Daze. (Lets say I drawn no land and he got his one for Bolt/Swords/Disfigure.) I met opponents who gladly exchanged a few life points just to make sure I'll never return to game.
I'm not saying that th whole "Delver, go" is a bad plan, and it has its pros like applying pressure, seeing more cards in next turn's Ponder, etc. But saying that it's the only possible play, that anyone daring to evaluate the situation otherwise should stop playing tempo, or that it's a fool-proof plan, is not true. Because I lost fair amount of games with exactly this kind of plays.

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Originally Posted by Contract Killer

What do you think of this recent list by Steve Mann http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=77678

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I love this classic archetype and thread, but this is not rug and belongs in ur thread. Just look at the manabase. No wastelands/stifles with only 2 daze? Nothing rug about that. This isn't 2008 anymore where you jam goyf (and grip) into everything. The meta for that event was anything but representative of the current state of legacy. So many entrants were trying to mindgame and go deep into solving the 16 person meta (which is fine with thousands at stake).

During coverage of his match it was reported he didn't test the deck much before registration either.

I snap waste t1 when I see stifle mana gone and the percentage of you having another blue is so low. I'm used to you trying to ride a delver. I would also like to prevent a goyf from showing up and having a hand with 3 lands is even less likely after I fire a waste. Having a delver go the distance has been very rare in my exp and your fumbling manabase is more of a sure thing. Just my 2 cents as the guy on the other side of the table on the draw.


Oh and a happy new year!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by apon

Hello everybody,
i recently discussed watching a SCG video with some friends about starting a game with RUG delver.

When you are on the play and don't know what your opponent is playing it's sometimes difficult to choose the best way to start. For example, that seems a good hand:
delver of secrets
Spell Pierce
Brainstorm
Fetch
Wasteland
Ponder
Lightning Bolt

Knowing what tour opponent is playing is easy:

• fetch-delver against control or not winning turn 1 combos
• fetch-go against the rest to be able to :
  
  • play pierce
  • protect your only blue land against a possible wasteland
  • kill a mana curve creature like deathrite shaman at end of opponent's turn
  • playing brainstorm at end of opponent's turn if nothing before happened for better choose what to do in your next turn
  
  

If you don't know what your opponent is playing, what would be your start?
thanks and happy new year!

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Anybody who grapples with these lines of play either don't play tempo very often or are new to playing the rug. Either is a fine reason we all have to start somewhere right? If you're on the play with that hand there's really only 2 lines of play and personally I only think one is good.

delver of secrets
Spell Pierce
Brainstorm
Fetch
Wasteland
Ponder
Lightning Bolt

So for starters on the play in the blind with this I would do the following T1: fetch -> volcanic -> delver pass. If you worry about keeping one land hands with tempo decks then you should choose another deck. We play 14 colored sources and if you start with ponder and brick forced to shuffle then next turn you still have to play out your threat, still won't have a second land, and still won't have protection.

The land choice I will admit is a crap shoot in the blind. I personally would go with volcanic so we have access to bolt for whatever turn 1 crit they may play which could very well be drs. There is an argument for getting trop that way if they do take delver out and we ponder turn 2 it's easier to find another threat. In the blind both are valid and you just have to roll the dice. Against something like Jund or UWR delver decks that have like 8+ removal I would go for trop since it's likely we won't be able to protect our threat forever.

Now if you're worried about someone playing wasteland turn 1 against you don't. Anyone who has played legacy long enough knows that playing out a wasteland turn 1 when a tempo deck has a turn 1 threat is straight up bad. Our whole game plan is to keep their lands off the table to make our cheap permission better. If they wasteland us turn 1 and we have another land it's really bad for them. All playing wasteland does for them is make our daze/pierce that much better. If someone wastelands you off the bat they're playing loose if you ask me. The risk is just too high for the opponent to wasteland us turn 1.

Finally if you worry about someone trying to remove delver turn 1 it's something that you can't always avoid. Most opponents will try to wait until they are out of daze range or have their own pierce/force back up. This is mainly because tempo decks have 8 free counter spells. Opponents who do jam removal turn 1 have excess removal, countermagic to back up their removal, are calling your bluff or just have a bad hand and know they need to get delver off the table if they want any chance.

As for knowing what you're playing against that becomes more complicated. Still for the most part if you're on the play turn 1 delver is right against anything. Combo decks that can go off turn 1 SnT, reanimator or storm are holding 4 aces to go off turn 1 and not care about daze or force. At that point if their hand is:
Show and tell
griselbrand
ancient tomb
petal
force
blue card
X
Then you just have bad luck because that's the god hand and it will beat just about anything. On the draw against combo you usually want to wait until turn 2 or 3 to play a threat so you can hold up pierce/snare or something.

Any tempo mirrors these days on the draw you usually have to kill a turn 1 threat (delver, drs, mother, etc) if possible and end up having to play a ponder or bolt.

Miracles is a strange beast on the draw because they kind of have a pseudo combo against us (top + counterbalance). If they have turn 1 island -> top then I would hold up mana, but if they go plains -> top or island -> ponder than just play out your delver/goose. Miracles usually won't care about delver knowing how many outs they have to it as the game progresses. What this means to us is even on the draw we can probably get a few beats in with delver before the get rid of it.

To be honest eventually if you play a tempo deck long enough these lines of play just become second nature. I've been playing rug for about 2 years mainly due to financial reasons (and it's grown on me lol). I'm not an amazing player, but I know the deck like the back of my hand. If you want some real good advice follow Jacob Wilson's videos from about a year and half or two years ago. Despite them being old videos the lines of play are the same and rug's game plan / match ups haven't changed because fundamentally it's still a tier 1 deck. Many aspects of rug delver haven't changed over the past 2 years with the deck:
delver still is a house
goose is arguably the best or second best threat
bolt is still the best removal
people still run into snare/pierce after playing around daze or vice versa
when people play around daze/pierce force might still get them

Overall rug is a hard deck to play against and so long as you play tight most opponents will make a mistake somewhere along the lines and when you capitalize on that it's an easy win.

Happy New Year Mongoose-Fans ;)

Casting Delver of Secrets in the blind is a pretty darn good play. But turn 1 Wasteland, Turn 2 kill Delver is an effective play also. If the opponent Wastelands me, there is only a 45% chance I draw one of my 12 blue sources (only 12 left after the fetch) in the next 2 draw steps and a 69% chance of drawing a blue source in the next 3 draw steps. The opponent is probably getting at least 2-3 turns of unencumbered development most likely resulting in our losing.

But say I'm on the play Game 3 against Uwr Delver, so I know my opponent is on Wasteland, Bolt and StP. The example hand is basically a God hand, if I'm able to just stay in the game and play spells, I'm around 75% to win. There's a 57% chance my opponent sees Wasteland in their first 8 cards. It is probably about 40-45% chance our opponent will be able to succeed in his or her Wasteland gambit.

So for the rational Threshold player, it should come down to whether playing Ponder instead of Delver increases your chances of losing to more than the chance of losing to a Wasteland blowout. With the given hand, I can win as long as I can play spells and interact, so I will gladly Ponder for another land to keep me in the game.

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Originally Posted by BKclassic

Casting Delver of Secrets in the blind is a pretty darn good play. But turn 1 Wasteland, Turn 2 kill Delver is an effective play also. If the opponent Wastelands me, there is only a 45% chance I draw one of my 12 blue sources (only 12 left after the fetch) in the next 2 draw steps and a 69% chance of drawing a blue source in the next 3 draw steps. The opponent is probably getting at least 2-3 turns of unencumbered development most likely resulting in our losing.

But say I'm on the play Game 3 against Uwr Delver, so I know my opponent is on Wasteland, Bolt and StP. The example hand is basically a God hand, if I'm able to just stay in the game and play spells, I'm around 75% to win. There's a 57% chance my opponent sees Wasteland in their first 8 cards. It is probably about 40-45% chance our opponent will be able to succeed in his or her Wasteland gambit.

So for the rational Threshold player, it should come down to whether playing Ponder instead of Delver increases your chances of losing to more than the chance of losing to a Wasteland blowout. With the given hand, I can win as long as I can play spells and interact, so I will gladly Ponder for another land to keep me in the game.

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For starters the chance of someone having a wasteland in their first 8 cards is only 36%. Probability in magic is based off of hypergeometrics. Here's a brief crash course on it:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/chrism...-distribution/
Now if you don't want to bother understanding all of the math just look at the variables and you can plug them into a calculator:
http://stattrek.com/online-calculato...geometric.aspx

Let's look at the chance for seeing a second land off of ponder.
Population size (deck): 52 assuming we fetch (Whether we fetch or not isn't even going to change the margin by 0.01%)
sample size (cards drawn): in this case it's 3 because of ponder
number of successes in population (how many lands in the deck): 12 again based off of us fetching
successes in sample (number of lands we want in the 3 cards): 1
Average percentage of drawing a second land off of ponder turn 1 = 42%

That data essentially says roughly 3/5 games that you try a turn 1 ponder for a second land it will not work. The odds are against us if only by 8%. On the other hand our opponent will only have wasteland roughly 1/3 games on turn 1. So overall there's a 58% we brick on pond turn 1 or we can look at the bright side that there's only a 36% chance our opponent will have wasteland turn 1. I mean I'll gamble my opponent having wasteland turn 1 over trying to ponder out a second land any day with those odds.

Essentially there's a chance we concede 1/3 games if the opponent plays wasteland turn 1. So if we take the ponder route we do nothing turn 1, and still won't have a second land turn 2 3/5 games. There's also roughly 1/3 games that this plan will backfire on our opponent because we will have 2 lands in hand. The odds are in our favor in numerous ways to not ponder turn 1 and to instead play out delver.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Contract Killer

For starters the chance of someone having a wasteland in their first 8 cards is only 36%. Probability in magic is based off of hypergeometrics. Here's a brief crash course on it:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/chrism...-distribution/
Now if you don't want to bother understanding all of the math just look at the variables and you can plug them into a calculator:
http://stattrek.com/online-calculato...geometric.aspx

Let's look at the chance for seeing a second land off of ponder.
Population size (deck): 52 assuming we fetch (Whether we fetch or not isn't even going to change the margin by 0.01%)
sample size (cards drawn): in this case it's 3 because of ponder
number of successes in population (how many lands in the deck): 12 again based off of us fetching
successes in sample (number of lands we want in the 3 cards): 1
Average percentage of drawing a second land off of ponder turn 1 = 42%

That data essentially says roughly 3/5 games that you try a turn 1 ponder for a second land it will not work. The odds are against us if only by 8%. On the other hand our opponent will only have wasteland roughly 1/3 games on turn 1. So overall there's a 58% we brick on pond turn 1 or we can look at the bright side that there's only a 36% chance our opponent will have wasteland turn 1. I mean I'll gamble my opponent having wasteland turn 1 over trying to ponder out a second land any day with those odds.

Essentially there's a chance we concede 1/3 games if the opponent plays wasteland turn 1. So if we take the ponder route we do nothing turn 1, and still won't have a second land turn 2 3/5 games. There's also roughly 1/3 games that this plan will backfire on our opponent because we will have 2 lands in hand. The odds are in our favor in numerous ways to not ponder turn 1 and to instead play out delver.

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Thanks, that was really helpful!
Btw, I'm going to go "Thinking" every time I open a hand with two colored lands, and then I'd hesitantly play Delver with much mumbling so that I trick my opponents into turn1 Waste me. :smile:
Hope it'll work.

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Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer

Thanks, that was really helpful!
Btw, I'm going to go "Thinking" every time I open a hand with two colored lands, and then I'd hesitantly play Delver with much mumbling so that I trick my opponents into turn1 Waste me. :smile:
Hope it'll work.

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To make sure your opponent tilts, remember to say "Top deck!" when playing the second land.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer

Thanks, that was really helpful!
Btw, I'm going to go "Thinking" every time I open a hand with two colored lands, and then I'd hesitantly play Delver with much mumbling so that I trick my opponents into turn1 Waste me. :smile:
Hope it'll work.

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No problem. A year ago I was interested in how the probability in magic worked so I did some research. I actually tried writing my own java program to find probability of cards in a magic deck. Needless to say it was a bit of a nightmare and I gave up too man variables to keep track of, store, switch into other equations, and then display.

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Originally Posted by Contract Killer

Let's look at the chance for seeing a second land off of ponder.
Population size (deck): 52 assuming we fetch (Whether we fetch or not isn't even going to change the margin by 0.01%)
sample size (cards drawn): in this case it's 3 because of ponder
number of successes in population (how many lands in the deck): 12 again based off of us fetching
successes in sample (number of lands we want in the 3 cards): 1
Average percentage of drawing a second land off of ponder turn 1 = 42%

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You seem to be forgetting the shuffle option on Ponder, and the fact that succes is at least 1 land (not exactly 1).

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Originally Posted by wbw

To make sure your opponent tilts, remember to say "Top deck!" when playing the second land.

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Huh, how could I forget! Good idea... :laugh:

Quote:

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You seem to be forgetting the shuffle option on Ponder, and the fact that succes is at least 1 land (not exactly 1).

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Well, that's true. I'd be interested how the shuffle part changes the percentage.

Looks like I can't put an image up (as evidence) without hosting; so instead I'll just say:
Changing to "at least 1" means you have a 54.5% chance to find a land without shuffle (This means, BS *or* Ponder gives you this percentage)
Changing to "at least 1" with a shuffle (I.E. see 4) is roughly 65.4%***

I used deckulator with the values:
12/1
41/0
Draw 3 and 4 respectively.

***The draw 4 is flawed because it doesn't account for the +3 cards that will be in the deck after "Draw 3" into shuffle. It is likely more like 63%, but I am lazy.

EDIT:
Curiousity defeated my laziness, but I think my result is still flawed. I went with:
12/1
41/0
Draw 3
called P(A)

I then did
12/1
41/0
Draw 1
called P(B)

and then ((1-P(A)) * P(B)) + P(A) which resulted in 64.7%, which is higher than the draw 4, but i'm pretty sure that doesn't make sense.

Either way, you have a ~60-65% chance of seeing your land with a T1 ponder on the play. If you T1 ponder and are worried about T1 wasteland you have about a .35 * .39 chance of getting screwed (13.65%.) If you T1 Delver you have a 22.5% chance of seeing a colored land anyway, so you have a .78 * .39 (30.4%) chance of being screwed.

I think the T1 ponder makes good sense if they're a player known for aggressive wastelands as you have a much higher chance of being timewalked. I have no idea why the previous posters used .30% chance of wasteland over 39%. People usually run 4 if they run them.

Well let's hope that Treasure Cruise gets the banhammer so that nimble mongoose can revive again ;D
It is by far the best creature RUG has to offer and i would always play 4 if the format allowes me to do that (which is not the case at the moment)

Happy new year!

I didn't write anything in a forum for quite a while now but reading all those flawed percentages made me register an account here to enlighten you guys :tongue:

- The chance for you drawing a second land with your t1 ponder is 65.6%. If you consider that you will draw another card at your next drawstep you are at 73.7%.
55.29% for the first 3 cards, another 23.08% after shuffeling and 23.53% at the next drawstep; so we have 1-(1-0,5529)*(1-0,2308)*(1-0,2353) =0,7370
(fyi: if ponder was draw 4 instead the chance was 66.24% rather than 65.6%. The chance for a first turn BS finding a 2. land is only 55.29% + you waste your next 2 drawsteps! )

- The chance for drawing a second land during your regular drawstep is 23.08%

- The chance of your opponent having a wasteland in his first 8 is 44.48%

So the chance of you getting screwed in this scenario is 11.7% with ponder and 34.21% without! This ignores the chance that they might not use their Wasteland even if they have it. Imo this chance is affected by our first turn play: If we play delver we put pressure on them so they might very well have other things to do - if we ponder instead, we show weakness which might induce them to waste us.

What the guy on the other side of the table should consider when thinking about whether or not to use his wasteland is that I still have 5 cards in my hand and I will draw another one next turn. With 12 lands remaining in my library this makes ̶7̶̶7̶̶.̶̶5̶̶5̶% 82.36% (for the first 5 cards theres still 13 availible lands not 12) that his attempt will fail and all he did was giving me a free timewalk...

Consindering all those numbers I think it's definitely the best play to lead with delver, probably even if I know for certain that I am up against a wasteland-deck. And for the opponent I guess with most hands without probes it's best not to go the wasteland route. They can still try for that if I miss my landdrop on turn 2 - even if it's way less poweful then, due to stifle + we get another chance to BS/ponder.

(edited for correction)

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Originally Posted by sawatarix

Well let's hope that Treasure Cruise gets the banhammer so that nimble mongoose can revive again ;D
It is by far the best creature RUG has to offer and i would always play 4 if the format allowes me to do that (which is not the case at the moment)

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I would argue that Nimble Mongoose is better positioned in the metagame than it was pre-Treasure Cruise. Granted I primarily play online and so my observations come from dealing with the online metagame.
-Before Treasure Cruise, RUG Delver was the best Delver deck in non-Delver matchups. Nimble Mongoose is a much more robust threat than Deathrite Shaman against Miracles and Deathblade and a faster threat against combo (although graveyard interaction can certainly be invaluable). Deathrite Shaman-Delver builds, BUG and bUrg Delver, while less potent against non-Delver decks, are great against RUG Delver since Deathrite Shaman is so antithetical to Nimble Mongoose and our gameplan. There wasn't really a way to improve our chances against Deathrite Shaman without running the card ourselves, making these match-ups structurally difficult. As opposed to difficult match-ups like Maverick, which can be hard, but is reasonably winnable with sideboard considerations, where there aren't many great sideboard cards to hose Deathrite Shaman when it's in a Delver deck.
-Post Treasure Cruise, UR Delver is the new baseline Delver deck and, unlike BUG and bUrg, is a good match up. They don't have any good answers against to our large green creatures. Nimble Mongoose specifically is great because it has shroud, so they can't use burn spells on it that would let the UR player fill their graveyard and cast another Treasure Cruise. Game 1 can be difficult if they get a Young Pyromancer out of control, but post board Rough/Tumble is amazing. My record against UR Delver is around 10-2 in tournament matches. The decks that pray on Treasure Cruise decks that people are playing are pretty beatable as well. Chalice of the Void/Trinishphere decks aren't especially consistent, RUG Delver is the blue deck running the most Daze's and Spell Pierces and we have Ancient Grudge. Elves, Death and Taxes, Miracles, Sneak Attack and Storm aren't always easy but basically come down to who the better player is and who built their deck better. Apparently BUG Delver is a deck to beat still, but it unlike RUG Delver, BUG Delver matches up poorly against UR Delver where Deathrite Shaman gets burned quickly and doesn't do all that much. I don't see anyone playing Deathrite Shaman in Delver decks anymore online. So now that the BUG and bUrg decks are on the decline, RUG Delver is back to being the undisputed Delver champion, IMO.

Thx for the short Metagame summary.
I still believe that playing a delver deck without a carddrawengine (i'm talking about cruise ;D )
is not competitive enough right now.
I mean,would you play this deck when all other players slam their 1 mana ancestral recalls on the table?
In my opinion there are 2 options:
1. play cruise ourselves somehow,my buddy BB8
has been victorious so far.
(Claudio Bonanni at TC Decks)

2. Play another carddrawmachine such as sylvan library and standstill

Without those cards we are trading 1 for 1 during the first turns only to get frustrated if our opponent
refreshes his hand and board during turn 4-6.
That's normally the point of the game where we have 0 cards in hand.

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Originally Posted by FelsKlette

What the guy on the other side of the table should consider when thinking about whether or not to use his wasteland is that I still have 5 cards in my hand and I will draw another one next turn. With 12 lands remaining in my library this makes ̶7̶̶7̶̶.̶̶5̶̶5̶% 82.36% (for the first 5 cards theres still 13 availible lands not 12) that his attempt will fail and all he did was giving me a free timewalk...

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When I thought about this a little more I realized that it is bullshit...obviously even I make mistakes :rolleyes:

As I already played a land card from my hand the remaining 5 cards are no longer random and thus can't be treated like any 5 random cards from the library!
So we have to look at the probability for the whole 7card-hand to contain no more than one land. I'd assume that hands with 4+ colored lands are mulligan anyway so I will ignore those.
Here we go: 33,95% hands with 1 land, 32,30% with 2, 15,38% with 3 lands and 18.37% mulligan hands with either 0 or 4+ lands.
This makes 41.59% of the relevant hands containing only 1 colored land! So wasting the opponents land will leave him screwed for at least one turn in 31,99% and for at least two turns in 24,46%.

But I still think that this gamble ain't woth it. Especially as the opponent doesn't even know that we are on canadian. For all he knows we could as well be UR-delver or patriot... AfaIk both of these decks play more colored lands and thus are less likely to have no second land!

@Sawatrix-
I would invite you to consider this article by Gerry Thompson http://www.starcitygames.com/article...Mattering.html

Basically he makes the point that in Magic's current age, card advantage is secondary to tempo in terms of what wins games of Magic. Treasure Cruise is basically the ultimate case in point. Since Treasure Cruise opponents want to run a 16 cantrip build (4 BS, 4 Ponder, 4 Probe, 4 Cruise) in order to utilize Treasure Cruise effectively and since Treasure Cruise is incompatible with graveyard based green creatures, there is a lot space for us to tempo our opponents out of the game. Mostly Nimble Mongoose, but to a lesser extent Tarmogoyf, are effective against Treasure Cruise, similar to how Storm decks are effective against Treasure Cruise. Granted, we are not quickly comboing our opponents out through modicum of disruption, but the constraints Treasure Cruise puts on our opponents deck make it hard for our them to interact effectively with us. They need to take time to cast tons of cantrips to find action, their removal does not kill our large green creatures, our answers match their threats, and Treasure Cruise just draws them into more of the same. Our strategy results in our green creatures being able to create enough virtual card advantage to outpace our Treasure Cruise opponents.

It is true that there are Treasure Cruise builds that we don’t match up well against. BUG Delver is mostly unbeatable, but UR Delver stomps all over it and consequently is not being played much, I’ve only had one match against BUG since Treasure Cruise was released.

The decks trying to hate on Treasure Cruise are pretty beatable as well. Compared UR Cruise decks, we are better prepared to beat decks like Chalice Aggro, Death and Taxes and Storm since slots that would be wasted on cantrips can be used for answers and Tarmogoyf is typically much better than Young Pyromancer against these kind of decks.

So I certainly agree that getting a Treasure Cruise resolved against us is not good news, but card advantage isn’t everything. I don’t play a ton of MODO but I have been able to 3-1 a bunch daily’s and 4-0 a couple since Treasure Cruise was released, I’m up about 150 tickets from winning with RUG Delver in November and December.

So, uh... Kird Ape.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=78736

I don't currently play this deck myself, but I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to say about this. Both Canadian Threshold lists in that top 8 had a full set of Kird Ape.

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Originally Posted by Grand Superior

So, uh... Kird Ape.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=78736

I don't currently play this deck myself, but I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to say about this. Both Canadian Threshold lists in that top 8 had a full set of Kird Ape.

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Does not die to Forked Bolt. A certain edge in the URx mirror