[Deck] Belcher

I cannot, in any way, shape, or form support Street Wraith's inclusion in this deck. This is a deck in which mulliganing is VITAL - much more so than most decks. Street Wraith can only increase the difficulty of the your mulligan decision making process. Take this hand for example:

LED
Land Grant
Rite of Flame
Rite of Flame
Chrome Mox
Elvish Spirit Guide
Street Wraith

I would be forced to mulligan this hand. You?

How about this one:

Petal
Empty the Warrens
Chrome Mox
Burning Wish
Simian Spirit Guide
Tinder Wall
Street Wraith

Do you keep this? Your decision is much easier if you knew what Street Wraith was going to cycle into, wouldn't it? And what would we be replacing Street Wraith with - probably Dark Ritual or Wild Cantor. Wouldn't either of those cards be better in the opening grip than SW?

Essentially, SW takes a 7 card hand and turns it into a 6 card hand with a mystery card. I personally don't feel like playing guessing games with this deck.

Although SW can be imprinted on Chrome Mox, I'm not so sure that I ever would do that. I would probably always cycle it to get a red or green card to imprint or simply a better card.

In Belcher, Street Wraith is a weak card that only negligibly increases your chances of getting your better cards. As of now, I see no room for Street Wraith in Belcher.

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Originally Posted by Ewokslayer

The problem with your analysis is that most of it is wrong.
Yes Belcher is made up of two types of cards Mana and Kill (the deck has no "business spells" The deck does two things, make mana and kill).
However not all mana sources in the deck are created equal.
There are Mana Sources that go from 0 to 1
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Land Grant
1 Taiga
1 Bayou
Mana Sources that add one Mana
3 Tinder Walls
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Rite of Flame (1st one)
Mana Sources that add two Mana
4 Dark Ritual
4 Seething Song
Rite of Flame (2nd)
Mana Sources that aren't really
4 Wild Cantor
4 LED
So, with that out of the way lets look at your "sample" hands

How are you all set? Do those 4 mana cards produce 4 mana, 6, 7?
If they only produce four mana, what is the storm when that happens as 10 of your mana cards don't up the storm count. What happens to this hand if Street Wraith becomes a ETW, Burning Wish, or Belcher?
Taking a chance he'll be a mana source? WTF. I would rather take a chance that he would be a mana source by him you know actually being a mana source.
Why would you mulligan a hand that is almost always going to get you to 4,6,or 7 mana 1st turn to use your kill spell.

While I am all for testing Street Wraith in Belcher I think most people are overlooking or ignoring one very important part of playing this deck.
The only decision to make is weather to mulligan the opening hand or not. Street Wraith makes that decision harder. You are never going to keep a hand with only mana cards, a Street Wraith, and no kill card so basically you are replacing Mana in the deck so you can run Street Wraith so you can cycle Street Wraith to find the Mana that you replaced with it.
Unless you can guarantee that the cycle will find you a Mana card and that Mana card is better than the card Street Wraith is replacing I don't see Street Wraith being good in the deck.
Edit: Though it would be better savage if you could figure out a realistic way to know what Street Wraith will draw and thus use LED mana on more things.

Cutting Chrome Mox seems awful.

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Ok we both agree there are two card types in the deck. You call them "kill" I call them "business". I use Burning Wish for much more than killing so I dont like calling it a kill. Everything in the deck makes mana except for these cards that do some effin business.

4 mana, 2 business, 1 sw seems fine to me based on this principle;
I want 2 business spells in my opening seven. I dont like relying on my one belcher w/ seven mana in hand against an unknown opponent. That opponent might have FoW. Some of the non belcher cards might not be land grant. This changes if the 1 business spell is EtW as long as your opponent cant stuff you with FoW again by hitting the Seething Song that makes 4 mana ect.

So with that hand your gonna assume sw will turn into mana. I think seeing as to how there are only 9 more business spells to draw in 53 cards gives us a great chance. If your really banking the game on needing Seething Song or another +2 mana maker then you might want to consider a mull but if you just need to wait a turn or two more to draw phase into the mana the stability of 2 business spells in your opening hand will probably pay off.

Its really not a joke that you can cast his ass either.

The big freakout about him in your opening hand would be less significant if you only decided to play 3 of them.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

and if your opponent countered the wish target instead of countering the wish, so is he.

Not drawing a win condition off of the new hand is just bad luck.

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Why the hell would you say that if the obvious senerio leaves the player with 4 mana when burning wish is on the stack? Your obviously gonna play Empty the Warrens and it has storm. Im glad Im not a retard and would know enough to counter the wish..

Not drawing a win condition off the top 7 happens when your only playing 11 business spells and you remove the top 10 from the game..

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Originally Posted by Peter_Rotten

LED
Land Grant
Rite of Flame
Rite of Flame
Chrome Mox
Elvish Spirit Guide
Street Wraith

I would be forced to mulligan this hand. You?

How about this one:

Petal
Empty the Warrens
Chrome Mox
Burning Wish
Simian Spirit Guide
Tinder Wall
Street Wraith

Do you keep this?

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Hand 1 I would mulligan obviously just like in the example I gave. If you took out a mana producer you'd mull that hand anyways. If that Street Wraith was Wild Cantor you would've pitched it too.

The second hand I would keep. You have 4 mana even without cycling yet. That gives you 4 storm on EtW. If Street Wraith becomes mana which it probably will, your in even better shape. You lead by cycling him obviously, if he draws into business rather than mana you simply imprint the 3rd business spell on chrome mox and win.

If your too stoned or hung over to make the right play with that you can always imprint it on the Chrome Mox..

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Originally Posted by revenge_inc

I've been thinking the idea of Street Wraith's over and I think it may not be the best idea to include them. "gasp".

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Originally Posted by Ewokslayer

While I am all for testing Street Wraith in Belcher I think most people are overlooking or ignoring one very important part of playing this deck.
The only decision to make is weather to mulligan the opening hand or not. Street Wraith makes that decision harder....

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Originally Posted by Illissius

I think Street Wraith might be a bad idea. Let me explain...

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Originally Posted by Peter_Rotten

I cannot, in any way, shape, or form support Street Wraith's inclusion in this deck. This is a deck in which mulliganing is VITAL - much more so than most decks. Street Wraith can only increase the difficulty of the your mulligan decision making process.

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Three other people came to the same conclusion as I posted ealier, including Ewokslayer, who has won with the deck. I'm convinced, Street Wraith does not deserve a place.

@Peter,

The first hand is a mulligan regardless of the card that Street Wraith replace, so that's not an argument against Street Wraith as far as I'm concerned. If you were on the draw, drawing your 8th card and then cycling Street Wraith for the 9th card is at least a possibility for you to consider before you mull it.

That second hand is a good hand with/with out Street Wraith.

@Bane

I have absolutely no idea why you're taking offense to a remark that wasn't directed at you, but he said he Burning Wished for Diminishing Returns, and the Diminishing Returns was countered, which means he's a bad player for wishing for Diminishing Returns, and the opponent is a bad player for not countering the Burning Wish and mana burning him for four. Obviously it isn't obvious if some one went thru' this series of plays in a game and thinks it's a counter argument for Diminishing Returns.

Removing 10 cards from the deck is statistically irrelevant, and not drawing a 1 of 11 win conditions in 7 cards is bad luck when you average 2 win conditions per hand. We've all had D7 hands flop, but so what? That's the risk of alternating win conditions, generating additional mana, generating additional storm and getting a second land drop. There's absolutely no reason not to use the card.

@ In general,

Street Wraith is a great card in this deck, people shouldn't shy away from complicating their mulligans, because their not difficult to begin with and mulliganing is the only actual skill you use in this deck. I've been using Street Wraith and Serum Powder in R/g Belcher for awhile, and both of them are fine as long as you know how to mulligan.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Street Wraith is a great card in this deck, people shouldn't shy away from complicating their mulligans, because their not difficult to begin with and mulliganing is the only actual skill you use in this deck. I've been using Street Wraith and Serum Powder in R/g Belcher for awhile, and both of them are fine as long as you know how to mulligan.

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To better understand your opinion here, I need to know what cards you replaced for SW. Next, could you provide some sample hands in which you believe SW to be good card. Maybe I can be convinced with some specific examples.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Bane

I have absolutely no idea why you're taking offense to a remark that wasn't directed at you, but he said he Burning Wished for Diminishing Returns, and the Diminishing Returns was countered, which means he's a bad player for wishing for Diminishing Returns, and the opponent is a bad player for not countering the Burning Wish and mana burning him for four. Obviously it isn't obvious if some one went thru' this series of plays in a game and thinks it's a counter argument for Diminishing Returns.

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and if your opponent countered the wish target instead of countering the wish, so is he.

I misunderstood you. I read this as though you meant countering the product of the wish was the right play. I wasnt offended but disregard it anyways.

Peter you already gave the perfect example of a SW hand. What Id replace from the list are the Wild Cantors and Dark Rituals, opening 4 more slots for maindeck Xantids or other meta spots.

But I can't think of a opening hand where I'd be happy to have SW. Can you? Please show me a few if you can.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

There's no reason to splash black for Dark Ritual and use Wild Cantor, when you can use Street Wraith and get a mana source that can be just as good as Dark Ritual or better than Wild Cantor.

You can always imprint it on Chrome Mox to.

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Just as good as Dark Ritual isn't going to happen as there is exactly one other card that nets you 2 mana and that one costs 3 to cast (Seething Song)

Any colored card can be imprinted on Chrome Mox so I am not impressed.

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Originally Posted by Bane of the Living

4 mana, 2 business, 1 sw seems fine to me based on this principle;
I want 2 business spells in my opening seven. I dont like relying on my one belcher w/ seven mana in hand against an unknown opponent. That opponent might have FoW. Some of the non belcher cards might not be land grant. This changes if the 1 business spell is EtW as long as your opponent cant stuff you with FoW again by hitting the Seething Song that makes 4 mana ect.

So with that hand your gonna assume sw will turn into mana. I think seeing as to how there are only 9 more business spells to draw in 53 cards gives us a great chance. If your really banking the game on needing Seething Song or another +2 mana maker then you might want to consider a mull but if you just need to wait a turn or two more to draw phase into the mana the stability of 2 business spells in your opening hand will probably pay off.

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2 bs in your deck leaves a 17% chance of the top card being a bs, not so good odds. Chrome Mox off the top isn't always so hot, neither is Tinder Wall depending on the remaining mana.

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Its really not a joke that you can cast his ass either.

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Double Black off of 4 sources isn't a joke?

Though really I don't think the arguement should be is Street Wraith good?
It should be is Dark Ritual worth running in the deck at the expense of having to run 4 Wild Cantors and 1 bayou?
If you are answering Yes to that question there is no room for Street Wraith except maybe replacing Desperate Ritual.
If you are answering No then you have 9 slots to fill (1 Bayou, 4 Dark Ritual, 4 Wild Cantors) 1 of those slots goes to Tinder Wall and then you have nothing left to put in those slots because Red and Green has no other mana acceleration that fits in the deck.
A point for Wild Cantor beside making Dark Ritual playable is that it does make it easier to cast Tinder Wall.

@Peter,

You have to approach Serum Powder and Street Wraith from the following angles. First, If the win conditions and the mana in R/g = Max, then R/g Belcher has 8 slots left to fill. These are the same slots CRET Belcher uses on Dark Ritual and Wild Cantor, but the problem with Dark Ritual is that it requires Land Grant, Bayou, Lotus Petal or Wild Cantor in order to serve as a mana source, and Wild Cantor is an unnecessary mana fixer with out Dark Ritual. While Dark Ritual is a 2x mana source, Wild Cantor is a 0x mana source, so you're netting a total of 4 more 1x mana sources, and if you're only netting a total of 4 more 1x mana sources, then you may as well just use Street Wraith, which is a mana source 75 percent of the time, and prevent the Bayou from causing failed Belcher activations. Second, in R/g Belcher, you can either choose to fill these 8 slots with disruption, Swarms, Welders, Blasts etc, or additional threats in Living Wish and Storm Entity. Assuming that neither of those options are desirable, you can treat those 8 slots as "null space" with Serum Powder and Street Wraith.

Serum Powder and Street Wraith are equal to card X, for the purpose of this argument card X is Red Elemental Blast or Pyroblast, or rather a card that doesn't generate mana or a threat. Now, when you draw Serum Powder or Street Wraith, the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not that hand would have been playable/better if either of those cards were card X, and in goldfish mode the answer is no.

Then the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the hand is playable with just those six cards. With Serum Powder, if the answer is yes, then you can accept the dead card and play your hand. If the answer is no, or you can't afford a dead card against control, then you RFG the hand, you reduce the deck size by one by RFGing the Serum Powder, and the other RFG cards are being RFGed at an equal ratio, so RFGing them from the deck doesn't really matter. You're effectively getting a free mulligan to six, and if you don't like it, you can thin your deck and go to seven. With Street Wraith, if the answer is yes, then you just cycle the Street Wraith and get a six card hand with a free draw.

The only really complicated thing about Serum Powder and Street Wraith is trying to keep a marginal hand wither either one in the hopes that you'll draw what you need between being on the draw and cycling. I've seen people either get really lucky or really unlucky doing this, but if you know the math and you don't want to mulligan, you can go for it. Usually, I don't take my draw step into consideration when I'm mulliganing, and as long as you don't either, you probably wont get pissed off at Serum Powder or Street Wraith instead of blaming yourself for taking a risk.

Here is the list I use,

4 Goblin Charbelcher
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Burning Wish
4 Serum Powder
4 Street Wraith
4 Seething Song
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Right of Flame
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Tinder Wall
4 Simain Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Land Grant
1 Taiga

Instead of me giving specific examples of "six card hands", you should shuffle that list on MWS and then goldfish it for awhile. Every time you draw a Serum Powder or a Street Wraith, keep a specific card in mind, card X, where card X doesn't produce mana or a threat, and you'll see that despite "complicating the mulligan" that once you've mastered your mulliganing skills, those two cards are invaluable to the deck's consistency.

@ Ewokslayer,

Dark Ritual and Wild Cantor are a pair, and the average mana production is one, so if you Street Wraith into another mana source, that mana source should be just as good if not better on average. Picking up the second Rite of Flame, Seething Song or a Lion's Eye Diamond is usually a huge play.

i'm suprised someone hasn'y mentioned this, so i took it upon myself to point this out.

Using street wraith AND serum powder in the same deck is just stupid (no offence, to anyone). The whole problem with wraith, is that it might draw you into some use-less dead card; thereby completely screwing your hand. By adding in 4 serum powders, you are greatly increasing the chance of that wraith drawing dead.

with that said, serum powder does not belong here (again, no offence). I have been told (i think this is true), that with the 11 win-cons in this deck, you have a 78% chance of drawing one or more on your first hand. That translates to, you will rarely mull more than once. Serum is best suited for aggresive mull strategy, like when your only running 4 win-cons (looking at you, flucuator).

If you insist on running wraith (which i would advise against), there are many better options for the wild cantor spot. For one, xantid swarm is one decent option. Pyroblast is another nice option for you; at worst it will pump your storm count. Perhaps the best option, is leaving 3 cantors in the deck, and adding the fourth tinder wall.


What is the general opinion on Xantid Swarm versus Pyroblast? i have always run pyroblasts (SB), but perhaps xantid merits looking into.

Also, how has deconstruct been working out?, seems like it would have its uses. however, i run black for dark rituals, so green is often hard to find...

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Originally Posted by honz

i'm suprised someone hasn'y mentioned this, so i took it upon myself to point this out.

Using street wraith AND serum powder in the same deck is just stupid (no offence, to anyone). The whole problem with wraith, is that it might draw you into some use-less dead card; thereby completely screwing your hand. By adding in 4 serum powders, you are greatly increasing the chance of that wraith drawing dead.

with that said, serum powder does not belong here (again, no offence). I have been told (i think this is true), that with the 11 win-cons in this deck, you have a 78% chance of drawing one or more on your first hand. That translates to, you will rarely mull more than once. Serum is best suited for aggresive mull strategy, like when your only running 4 win-cons (looking at you, flucuator).

If you insist on running wraith (which i would advise against), there are many better options for the wild cantor spot. For one, xantid swarm is one decent option. Pyroblast is another nice option for you; at worst it will pump your storm count. Perhaps the best option, is leaving 3 cantors in the deck, and adding the fourth tinder wall.


What is the general opinion on Xantid Swarm versus Pyroblast? i have always run pyroblasts (SB), but perhaps xantid merits looking into.

Also, how has deconstruct been working out?, seems like it would have its uses. however, i run black for dark rituals, so green is often hard to find...

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Serum Powder should be the first card in any deck where the deck's objective is to find a single card and resolve it. It's not about whether or not you can't find that single card or not, but whether or not you can find the right hand with that single card in it. Serum Powder is virtual card advantage when you don't draw a win condition, 1/5 of the time is actually a lot in a tournament, and it's virtual card advantage when you draw too many win conditions. It's card quality when you're gaining free six card hands to choose from, and it's card quality when you Serum Powder the hand, because you're removing null space from the deck, the Serum Powder, and you're removing the rest of the cards at an equal ratio.

Statements like "The problem with Street Wraith is that it could draw a dead card and make an entire hand useless" are ignorant, no offense, because if you can't distinguish between a six card hand you need to mulligan and a six card hand you can keep, with a free draw from Street Wraith, you don't have the necessary mulliganing skills to play this deck at all. Street Wraith into Serum Powder is unfortunate, but it's not the end of the world, and it happens less than 1/13 of the time, which is less than the number of times you'll draw a hand with out a win condition and with a Serum Powder, the number of times you'll draw three wind conditions and a Serum Power and the number of times you'll draw a bad six card hand with Serum Powder as the seventh card etc.

The best argument against Serum Powder is that drawing into Serum Powder results in a dead card, and while that's true, Belcher doesn't care about what cards it draws, it cares about what cards it starts with. In that light, Serum Powder has no significant draw back, because the marginal utility of the Serum Powder mulligans is significantly higher than the costs of drawing a dead card.

Edit: Wild Cantor is worse than awful, he's terrible, unless you're casting him to enable Dark Ritual, you're losing one card from your hand, and despite generating storm, I bet that the Street Wraith would have resulted in a better hand or Serum Powder would have given you the option to "mulligan to seven."

Quick question.

Your deck is 49 mana sources, 11 win conditions. Four of the win conditions are not storm-based, and lose to permission.

Have you ever tested Goblin Welder in the sideboard? I imagine your worst matchups are naturally those in which permission plays a role. You are running 12 0cc artifacts to support welding in the Belcher to get around this. Best of all it costs R.

Just wondering if this is good at all.

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Originally Posted by Machinus

Quick question.

Your deck is 49 mana sources, 11 win conditions. Four of the win conditions are not storm-based, and lose to permission.

Have you ever tested Goblin Welder in the sideboard? I imagine your worst matchups are naturally those in which permission plays a role. You are running 12 0cc artifacts to support welding in the Belcher to get around this. Best of all it costs R.

Just wondering if this is good at all.

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It's not bad, but the problem is that the opponent is going to counter the mana sources more often than he's going to counter the win conditions, so even if you have a Goblin Welder, there's no guarantee that he'll prevent the opponent from keeping Belcher off of the board, and Red/Pyro Blast and Xantid Swarm can protect your acceleration, and Xantid Swarm can protect your Tutor + LED.

My personal reason to use Street Wraith instead of Dark Ritual was just that I hate Bayou in the Deck and Rit. isn't playable without it.
Wild Cantor is NOT that bad. If you hold a belcher and a Landgrant/Land it produces 1 mana (in turn 2) for the kill.

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It's card quality when you're gaining free six card hands to choose from, and it's card quality when you Serum Powder the hand, because you're removing null space from the deck, the Serum Powder, and you're removing the rest of the cards at an equal ratio.

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Equal ratio?
How so?
If you mulligan a 7 card hand with 6 mana cards and 1 Serum Powder your 53 card deck is no longer in an equal ratio of
41 Mana : 11 Kill : 8 crap to
35 Mana : 11 Kill : 7 crap
Thus you chance of your next 7 card hand containing too much kill and crap and not enough mana.

or even worse if your 7 card hand is 3 Kill, 3 mana and Serum Powder.
Mulliganing that only gives you 8 Kill left in the deck.

Also, your hand is more likely to be a forced mulligan if you play Serum Powder since Serum Powder is itself a dead card in your hand. Most of the time you're going to wish it was more mana, since that's actually what you need. I can't imagine when having to lose a card on the mulligan is worse than running a playset of terrible cards.

@Breathweapon: The fairly obvious flaw in your reasoning is that Dark Ritual and Wild Cantor do produce mana. Pretending they don't won't change the function of the cards.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Also, your hand is more likely to be a forced mulligan if you play Serum Powder since Serum Powder is itself a dead card in your hand. Most of the time you're going to wish it was more mana, since that's actually what you need. I can't imagine when having to lose a card on the mulligan is worse than running a playset of terrible cards.

@Breathweapon: The fairly obvious flaw in your reasoning is that Dark Ritual and Wild Cantor do produce mana. Pretending they don't won't change the function of the cards.

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That's true if and only if Serum Powder is replacing a mana source, and in R/g Belcher, it's not replacing a mana source. In fact, Serum Powder isn't replacing a single card that improves the goldfish of the deck in any situation, so it's essentially giving you a free six card hand to consider every time you draw it.

I never stated that Dark Ritual doesn't produce mana, I stated that Wild Cantor doesn't produce mana, and it doesn't produce mana until the second turn, at which point you sacrificed one mana to cast it and you are recouping the mana, where the chances are if you had just saved that one mana, you could have top decked into the mana to go off and win any way, or you could have Street Wraithed for the mana and won.

The problem is that using Dark Ritual just isn't worth using Wild Cantor and Bayou, and if you remove those cards and play R/g, you don't have cards that generate mana to replace them. So, instead, you just treat those 8 slots as "null space" and you actually end up with a more consistent and flexible deck.

@Ewokslayer, over time, it averages out. You can use specific examples all you want, but if you use a large enough sample size, you'll see what I mean. Even if the rate of RFG isn't perfectly linear, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and you can always choose to mulligan the hand instead of using Serum Powder, because sometimes you'll get SP, ETW, ETW, ETW, crap, crap, crap, and you'd rather not remove all of your ETW from the deck etc. The funny thing is, if SP were a Pyroblast there etc., it still wouldn't have made any difference, so at the very least Serum Powder is giving you another option to consider.

Usually, in situations where you have a heterogenous hand, like let's say Serum Powder, Goblin Charbelcher, Burning Wish, Seething Song, Lion's Eye Diamond, Tinder Wall, Elvish Spirit Guide and you still can't go off, you'll be RFGing those card at an equal ratio. It's not just a case of RFGing an all mana or a triple threat hand, but RFGing a balanced hand that just doesn't work.

Serum Powder is a great card in here. I don't think I could play Belcher with out it, and I've been playing Belcher for awhile.

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Originally Posted by Bane of the Living

I want 2 business spells in my opening seven. I dont like relying on my one belcher w/ seven mana in hand against an unknown opponent. That opponent might have FoW.

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You shouldn't be playing this deck then (or combo for that matter).

If 1 Belcher + 6 mana sources (which produce 7 mana) isn't good enough for you against an unknown opponent then no combo deck ever will be.

Let's take the GAGG, TML2 (both days), and KadiIII Top 8's as expected numbers:

1 Goblins/black*
3 Enchantress
1 WUB Angel Stompy*
1 Molotov Cocktail
2 Red Death*
2 Goblins/white
3 Goblins/green
1 43 Lands
1 UB Landstill*
2 Aluren*
1 Faerie Stompy*
1 TES*
1 UBG Pyschatog*
2 RGbSA*
1 CRET Belcher*
1 UWB Landstill*
1 Reanimator (Polar Express)*
1 RGbw Survival*
1 RWb Aggro
1 RWbg Aggro*
2 Red Thresh*
1 White Thresh*
1 4c Thresh*

All the asterisks are decks that can potentially disrupt the 6 mana + 1 Belcher hand (or 1 EtW/Wish hand if they've got a read on you having EtW or you have to play a vital Seething Song that they can just counter to leave you with less than 4 mana and 1 card left in hand) depending on who's on the play.

If you're on the play, we go down to the following decks:

2 Red Thresh
1 White Thresh
1 4c Thresh
1 UWB Landstill
1 Reanimator (Polar Express)
1 UBG Pyschatog
1 UB Landstill
2 Aluren
1 Faerie Stompy

Which is 11 out of 32. 11/32 * 39.9499626% (percentage of the time they have Force in their opening 7, doesn't include chances they'll have a blue card which pushes that number down, also doesn't include mulliganning, which pushes chances they have it up, we'll assume these two factors cancel out) = 13.73279964375% of the time on the play that that hand is good. Mulliganning that hand is almost always a mistake.

On the draw, assuming your opponent has scouted you, knows to lead with disruption, AND has an amazing read and knows what to name with Therapy, to make up for this, I'm not including Stifle, since Stifling a Belcher activation is weak anyways:

X/32 decks Y%
1 Goblins/black (3 Therapy + 12 black lands, about 32%)
1 WUB Angel Stompy (4 Duress + 13 black sources, about 32%)
2 Red Death (4 Duress, 4 Hymn + 4 Rit, >40%)
1 UB Landstill (4 FoW, 39.9499626%, Duress in the board)
2 Aluren (3 Therapy + 12 black lands, 4 Force, about 56% I think)
1 Faerie Stompy (4 FoW, 39.9499626%)
1 TES (has the nuts, kills you turn 1, let's say 10% of the time)
1 UBG Pyschatog (4 FoW, 39.9499626%, Duress in the board)
2 RGbSA (4 Duress + 10 black sources, 3 Therapy + 10 black sources, about 43%)
1 CRET Belcher (has the nuts, kills you turn 1, let's say 10% of the time, although I think it's actually less than this)
1 UWB Landstill (4 FoW, 39.9499626%, Duress in the board)
1 Reanimator/Polar Express (4 Duress + 18 black sources, 4 FoW, about 62% I think)
1 RGbw Survival (3 Therapy + 9 black sources, about 21%)
1 RWbg Aggro (3 Therapy + 12 black sources, about 24%)
2 Red Thresh (4 FoW, 39.9499626%)
1 White Thresh (4 FoW, 39.9499626%)
1 4c Thresh (4 FoW, 39.9499626%)

So for each of these we do X/32 * Y% and sum them up, we get (I think) about 24%.

So greater than 86% of the time on the play you win with that hand (against the field) and about 76% of the time on the draw you win with that hand (against the field). Again, if those percentages aren't good enough for you against and unknown opponent, likely no combo deck will be (the percentage of decks running FoW in Legacy is small in comparison to the number of decks you straight up goldfish).


EDIT: Those numbers also don't include your Belcher activation hitting a Bayou in the top 20, or a Taiga in the top 10. If someone knows the statistics off-hand of your first turn Belcher activation with 2 lands in the deck fizzling, let me know. You just multiple the lethal Belcher activation percentage with the 86% on the play and 76% on the draw to get the more legitimate numbers.

Serum Powder is at it's best when it's drawing you into an early game bomb that isn't very reliant on other cards in your hand, i.e. Workshop. Workshop loved this fucking card because the entire deck revolved around IT, and it needed pretty much no other cards to make it work. The rest of the deck was just stuff that you could cast with Workshop, so the chances of getting screwed by Powder were very low.

CRET Belcher isn't like that, because drawing a Belcher or Warrens isn't a guarantee that you're going to win. They're reliant on the other cards in your hand to get them to work, and drawing a Serum Powder instead of those cards is a real kick in the nuts.

That said, it might be better than I'm thinking. It really comes down to what works in testing and what doesn't. Theoretically I'm leaning towards it not working.

I would be interested in seeing more of a discussion of sideboarding techniques for different matchups. In the tournament report, the most common sideboarding was -2 Wild Cantor, -1 Dark Ritual for +3 Shattering Spree, against Pithing Needle and Chalice, I assume.

How do you board against Threshold or Meathooks, that might have Pithing Needle in addition to Daze and Force of Will? Do you bring in the 5 Blasts, and leave the Shattering Sprees for Wish targets? "Some combination of Land Grant, Wild Cantor, and Dark Ritual" leaves a lot of room for improper sideboarding in a matchup that is already going to be difficult.