You might be looking at this table exclusively:Quote:
Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght
p(drawing 1 or more 4-of after n cards):
7: 40%
8: 44%
10: 53%
13: 63%
p(drawing 1 or more 2-of after n cards):
7: 22%
8: 25%
10: 31%
13: 39%
And then going: "Well, a 2-of shows up 56% of the time in your starting hand if you have it by 13 cards whereas a 4-of shows up 63% of the time in your starting hand if you have it by 13 cards, therefore, if a card is good early, to maximize the probability of getting it early and minimize the probability of topdecking it, you should run four copies." It's not even much of a difference.
That makes some superficial sense, but if you ask yourself why the function is so much more concave down for 4-cards than for 2-cards, you'll get that the cause is DRAWING MULTIPLES.
Let's look at the expected number of cards drawn:
For a 4-of:
7 cards: 0.47
8 cards: 0.53
10 cards: 0.67
13 cards: 0.87
For a 2-of:
7 cards: 0.23
8 cards: 0.27
10 cards: 0.33
13 cards: 0.43
So now let's look at the probability of having a multiple (subtract one from the other, it technically gives you the probability of having a multiple * the number of extra cards for that given multiple):
4-of:
7: 7%
8: 9%
10: 14%
13: 24%
2-of:
7: 1%
8: 2%
10: 2%
13: 4%
If you look at a 4-of, you gain an extra 18% chance to open with it, but you also "gain" a 20% of seeing a second one by 13 cards (turn 5-6 without Brainstorms or AVs). For our deck (and you'd definitely agree if you played it a few times), you'd much rather not have a Vial at all than a second Vial. Goblins goes apeshit with two Vials (Matron for Ringleader, Ringleader finding Matron....), and actually wants 2 or even 3, but we can very very rarely make any use of a second Vial.
One other thing you might note is that Merfolk and Goblins have a distinctive endgame where Vial becomes irrelevant. Vial is never as strong a card in our deck as it is in Merfolk (and certainly not as strong as it is in Goblins), but it also very rarely turns to crap late-game like it does in those decks. Most of the time you'll be using Brainstorm to shuffle away extra lands and between the bounce effects and wastelands, even by turn 10 or 12, you might still only have 3-5 lands in play, so Vial will still allow you to spend mana on Jitte.
Relative to Merfolks and Goblins (and others you mentioned), we: 1) Don't care as much about getting Vial. 2) Hate to see multiple copies. 3) Don’t mind seeing it late, provided it's the first one.
But even if we wanted four Vials, we'd have to cut into our creature base to do it. That obviously cramps Vial’s power.
You summed it up well, actually:We don't get nearly as good use out of it as those lists. In those lists, they downright ABUSE Vial. Vial is the best card in those decks. For us, it's only a good card.Quote:
I feel like this deck doesn't get as good use out of Aether Vial as some lists where it's classically awesome (like Goblins, Merfolk, Slivers, Affinity, etc.)
Again, it's not as effective in our deck as it would be in, say, Merfolk. That's why we run 2 instead of 4, but I'll go with the comparison. I'll just use Finn's list as an example:Quote:
You run a few creatures which just don't work well with Aether Vial: I'm assuming you're rarely going to want to vial in a Fathom Seer, and Court Hussar just gives you a Ponder and dies if you use Vial on him. Maybe it seems insignificant, but that's already a full 25% of the creatures that you use and they're basically wearing t-shirts that say "Please don't play me off of Aether Vial."
20 Vialable targets. 4 at 1cc, 8 at 2cc, and 8 at 3cc. Vial represents a trick with Standstill, and to a lesser extent with Lords in the red zone or against decks with burn removal (if you have two lords already in play). It's also a trick on defense.
NoGoyf has:
15 Vialable targets. 8 at 1cc, 7 at 2cc, plus 4 Fathom Seers which can come in theoretically, and ticking Vial to 3 to get the instant-sac on Hussar. So at any fixed value, it’s about equal in effectiveness. It represents a sizeable trick with almost creature, AND we're always on defense.
Vialing in Mom endstep protects it from removal if your opponent taps out.
Vialing in Wayfarer endstep prevents them from holding land or digging basics in anticipation of wastelock. It also allows you to stay on one land. It's about as much of a trick for us as Standstill is for Merfolk.
Vialing in Knight should be fairly obvious, it's much easier to proc it if you can use fetchlands and it's a surprise. It also puts the land into play immediately.
Vialing Grunt endstep allows you to kill a lot of yard cards you wouldn't normally be able to.
Vialing in Avenger or Grunt or Knight are pretty big combat tricks. Note that they're singularly larger than any Merfolk, allowing plays like killing 3/4 Goyfs, Kird Apes, Nacatl's, etc. With an empty board (or even a no-lord board), Nacatl swing or Kird Ape swing are both obviously safe plays against Merfolk even without burn backup, but swinging into a Vial at 2 carries legitimate risks.
The first Vial is always pretty good. It represents two much-less useful lands and all those different tricks. The sum of the tricks and the land is generally worth more than a card. The second Vial doesn't really provide any new tricks, and the land is even less useful, making it a piece of shit to be avoided at all costs.
If you get outside the Legacy world, into Vintage, it’s very standard to see decks running 17 or 18 blue spells making clutch must-force plays on turn 1. All the blue spells we do run draw more blue spells (except Daze). I’ve only had problems of running out of blue against discard, but usually if they have something they want to resolve, they’ll pull the Force first anyway.Quote:
*You're still cutting it pretty close on the amount of blue spells you have to be able to pitch to Force of Will. If it's working consistently, great, but I'd be a little nervous only playing 18 blue spells, since that's 18 including the 4 FoW.
Combo exists. It’s used exclusively against combo, exclusively to tutor up combo hate. Mainly what it does is it stretches any type of hate we have into pulling double duty against multiple decks, and gives us more outs against pithing needle.Quote:
*Enlightened Tutor out of the sideboard is giving me a real case of the "wtf's". Why is this in there again?
With the Enlightened Tutor slots, the 2x Thorn of Amethyst is almost as good as 4x Thorn of Amethyst, but then Enlightened Tutor also lets us bring in more “copies” of Relic and Crypt against Ichorid. We get almost the same board strength against Ichorid and Storm combo as would take 9 slots and it only costs us 7, leaving us more room to board against other decks. Unlike a lot of the deck, it’s actually accepted into the cannon of board strategies. See Gabriel Nassif’s GP Chicago list. Enlightened Tutor makes an appearance in the board to snag Relic, Crypt, and Planar Void against Ichorid, Energy Flux against Affinity and Stax, and Engineered Plague against Tribal.
Very, very well. Mainly the mana can be used to cast Jitte or as general card advantage. Even if we can’t use the tempo, at all, it saves us from having to make a land drop, so after a Brainstorm it gives us +1 card.Quote:
*Knight of the White Orchid seems like a bit of a strange fit. Since your curve is so low, you don't really gain all that much with the pseudo-acceleration besides just deck-thinning. How has he been working out?
Merfolk actually runs a very similar curve. We have 5 three-drops and they usually have 8 or 9. We have 3 Jitte which is somewhere between 2 and 4cc.
Send a screenie of your Match History to prove 80% tournament win ratio (~95% match win), please, especially if you're going to troll just because you think 60% is too much.Quote:
Originally Posted by TFA
"3:2 favorite? Way too much. But I know I'm a 19:1 favorite when I play."
