You are welcome to your perspective, but I've played this game too long for me to agree with your sentiment.
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You are welcome to your perspective, but I've played this game too long for me to agree with your sentiment.
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Math is not a sentiment.
Here's an article for those of you interested in 8-Thalia decks.
Math is not a sentiment, but this goes way beyond math.
Deckbuilding is a series of choices based on highly personal priorities and conflicting goals. Reducing the chances of getting an important card by 0.5% is obviously bad, but that's not the only effect of including another card. You're right to bring up the importance of Vial, and the dangers of reducing the chances of seeing it. At the same time, it would be narrow-minded to only focus on maximizing Vial chances to the detriment of everything else. If first turn Vial was really all that mattered, we'd maindeck 4 Serum Powders to find them.
What if we add a 24th land to more consistently develop our mana? I'd say that the ability for modern builds to consistently hit 3 sources on turn 3 is extremely important, and a build with a ton of 3-drops could easily benefit enough to balance the 0.5% reduced chance of opening on Vial. But that leads to asking questions about why you're running a ton of 3-drops, and whether the slower resulting deck is worth the power of the 3 CMC spells. Trade-offs. Personal preferences. Sentiments. You correctly bring up "however you want to weigh" things above, because these trade-offs matter a lot and vary from player to player.
My goal is not to see a bunch of 61-card D&T decks. My goal is to see better D&T decks. In that vein, I'd like to encourage people to more seriously consider all aspects, both positive and negative, of adding another card. If you've done that analysis and come down strongly on the side of 60, I'm happy with that outcome. I'd just hope you're tolerant of others who've done their own analysis and ended up with a different conclusion.
I'm tolerant of them...they're just wrong.
That kind of sounds like not believing in maths. Or vaccines. Or climate change.
The mathematical analysis only offers you the outcome that a 61 card list can't be better than a 60 card list. You have a slightly decreased chance of hitting 1st Turn Vial, yes, but at the same time you have to extend the probabilities for other cards like Mother of Runes on turn 1 is usually also a very strong 1st Turn play. In addition tp that you have a slightly decreased chance to hit 2nd Turn Thalia/SFM/Rishadan Port, meaning that overall your deck won't run/curve as smoothly as with 60 cards.
In addition to that, you are probably jamming in cards that have an intrinsic variance by themselves, being great in one matchup and absolutely dead on others (like most of the creatures played with the Recruiter toolbox now), which will further distort your statistics against certain MUs given that you'll test with a sample size of like a few hundred games.
So yeah. I'm with iatee on this one.
If deckbuilding were simply an exercise in mathematics it would be far simpler and boringer. Fortunately, mathematics are the baseline for deck design and not the goal.
The 61 card has a negative. I am intimately familiar with this argument. I am also entirely familiar with magic players using that calculation as a crutch. If, in your expert opinion, taking any one of the 61 cards out of the deck is a greater negative, the 61 card is justifiable and correct. That is just a tall claim to make, which is why I for one, am not about to claim it is correct. But the analysis that got me there has nothing to do with math and everything to do with good understanding of the game.
And the above is non-sequitor and therefore fallacious reasoning. I choose to interpret the data differently, not incorrectly. I have not ignored the math.
Some of you are all too ready to hop on a self-righteous band wagon. I'm not asking you to agree, only to be tolerant of other people and their ideas. You say you are, but you aren't. Instead, just shut your mouth and silently recognize that you disagree and move on.
Ignoring math is what you two are doing. Just give the last article put up by medea/kirbysdl a second read and understand that some people weigh risk/reward situations differently than you do.
I'm over this topic. Can we keep talking about the deck?
Sorry I was mean guys.
This is the exact same failure of an argument that is used every time. You evaluate a proposal by calculating only what it costs you and negating what it provides you. What you've done is evaluate the effect of playing a blank 61st card. I'm not gonna get all giddy telling you that this is not exactly helpful.
There's a place between running 65-cards decks and joining the degerenate cult of "60 card is an absolute rule of law and going 61 is absolutely always wrong, we know this because we've managed to make the same one basic math calculation everyone is able to, but we're so proud of it there's no way we'll risk it by wondering if maybe there should also be other things to take into account". Oops, I realize I have almost cared for a couple minutes here, and I already regret this, as wisdom commands that there is just too many chances this is pointless. Happily someone once took the time to try to explain this, as linked before. If one's mind is still at least 1% able to process real reasoning on the matter, then one should read this.
I once drafted a 73 card deck and it worked perfectly, I went 1-3 at the FNM with it. 60 card argument btfo!
So how's Frank going for everyone?
Let's try to keep this thread productive and somewhat professional. We've discussed the 60 vs 61 card issue enough. Arguments have been made on both sides, and everyone is firmly entrenched in their own camp. Let's move on. Let's also kill this Frank thing while we are at it. I've said this plenty of times, but it was a funny joke, but if we keep it up, the readability of the thread decreases over time.
THC has been great for me in builds that can accelerate it out early, and I've been messing around with Hateful 8 builds again for that reason. I'm not sold on it in traditional D&T, but it is certainly putting up numbers and is not to be dismissed.
'Let's try to keep this thread productive and somewhat professional.' should have been my original response to 'Should we play 61 cards?'.
Anyway, I'm not going to spend any more energy trying to convince people not to sabotage their own decks.
Medea...I tried your hateful 8 list tonight.Did not have Crucibles so ran 2 aether vial.Went 4-0.There was a hilarious interaction when I played jailer.Went to draw at end of turn and opponent asked why.I said....I am the monarch.He called a judge.The whole table was cracking up because he was so flabbergasted over the monarch thing.
@Demonicdust
The shell is great. It plays out differently than D&T or the Eldrazi-based Hateful 8 decks, but it seems great. I'm 6-0 in sanctioned events with it and overall positive in my testing outside of that. If you don't have Crucibles, you could always just play a couple more Mindcensors to pair with the Ghost Quarters.
Yeah, I've had tons of people misplay against the Jailer or just be confused about how it worked. So many people assume it is like Banisher Priest or Fiend Hunter. I was playing against Burn yesterday, and my opponent bolted the Jailer to try and get his Eidolon back. Didn't quite work out for him...
I am temped to try out your turbo DnT, but missing some cards and I am not super excited about buying them (Chrome Mox). Tried several opening hands and openings like 3 lands and 3 creatures with cmc3 + noncreature spell happen more often than I would like to. What does the deck do if you do not draw Chrome Mox? You dropped Mom entirely and cut 2cc creatures drastically. Isn't deck too slow? How did you play out such games? On the other hand Chrome Mox into Thalia into Recruiter into Palace Jailer might be devastating..