[Deck] Non-LED Based Dredge/Ichorid Combo

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Originally Posted by Anusien

That's a completely lost cause, because you're taking for granted having those cards in the first place.

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That's the only situation that this is relevant.

What difference does it make if you have CC and another land but no dredger - or no way to get it in the bin? Your hand might still be keep-able (maybe) but you won't be planning on activating CC on turn two anyway. In order to make an appropriate assessment we have to assume that we could even make use of the card.

I'll grant you that the percentages will drop when you're forced to consider that you need to cast your discard outlet, but really that's it.

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Originally Posted by sunshine

That's the only situation that this is relevant.

What difference does it make if you have CC and another land but no dredger - or no way to get it in the bin? Your hand might still be keep-able (maybe) but you won't be planning on activating CC on turn two anyway. In order to make an appropriate assessment we have to assume that we could even make use of the card.

I'll grant you that the percentages will drop when you're forced to consider that you need to cast your discard outlet, but really that's it.

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I'm not comfortable assuming that you always draw Cephalid Coliseum. I think it's more useful to compare the chances of getting that hand in the first place than to compare when you've already drawn most of the nuts. This puts things into perspective much more cleanly.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

I'm not comfortable assuming that you always draw Cephalid Coliseum. I think it's more useful to compare the chances of getting that hand in the first place than to compare when you've already drawn most of the nuts. This puts things into perspective much more cleanly.

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I'm not assuming that you always draw Coliseum, I'm looking at how likely it is that you will be able to use it given that you've drawn it - and you've drawn it in a hand that you wouldn't mulligan anyway. By just looking at the chance that you draw Coliseum with another Land you falsely count a lot hands that get thrown back. For example, a hand of seven land (at least one being Coliseum), while rare, counts as a success in that model, but we really don't want to count as such. This is an extreme case but then we have to consider whether or not we could keep a hand that was Coliseum, rainbow rand, and no dredger, etc.

I took for given that we had a dredger and discard outlet because in our scenario we were dredging on turn two - on the play this requires a dredger and discard outlet (plus the correct land to play the outlet, which I admittedly neglected to account for). I think it would be way too much of a headache to try and nail down what constitutes a keepable hand.

Edit: I should also mention that in all our examples we have the same number of Coliseums in our deck. Accounting for the probability that we draw that first one is not necessary, although as you say it may help to put things in perspective.

Since I'm in a statistics mood, I'm going to start re-analyzing the deck in that framework. If you consider keepable only hands that have at least a rainbow land, at least a dredger, and at least a discard creature (the core of the deck), then you have about a 60% chance of finding a keepable hand going down to 5 with 11 rainbow lands, 11 dredgers, and 8 discard guys. If you go up to 12 dredgers, the percentage goes up a little to about 62%. If you cut to 10 rainbow lands, the percentage goes down to around 57%. If you cut to 8 rainbow lands, it drops to 49%.

I'm excluding Cephalid Coliseum and Darkmoor Salvage from the list because they're terrible at playing Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe on turn 1.

This math is a little quick and dirty, and doesn't take into account hands you can keep on the strength of Breakthrough or Careful Study (so no DDD). But it's pretty useful, I think. I may produce a more automated tool to do this analysis and report back.

I'd be interested to see what you come up with. There are certainly keepable hands that don't match that criteria, but I'd say that's a reasonable place to start with evaluating Coliseum. Heh, if you have the stoumach for statistics you're a braver man than I, I was always an abstract math guy myself.

I dunno, but wouldn't it be somewhat more feasible to drop CC and play another drawspell?
I mean, sure, cracking a CC is awesome, but it also has some huge requirements. I think it's much better in LED versions than in LEDless.

...we have more mana than LED-Dredge, and we have a good chance of seeing 2 Lands, so what about playing Zombie Infestation instead of Tireless Tribe? (or just run it as a 1-2-3-off, if you have random slots)


YawG

@ Anusien

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How did you calculate these? I think you're way off.

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The percentages didn't look right to me either. Unfortunately, I actually lost my work from before (wife deleted it). I re-wrote it here. It is producing approximately the same results as I had before. I'm assuming this script is attempting to emulate the results of your math.

I know one mistake I made. I had quickly copied portions of another script, and I edited incorrectly. I (stupidly) forgot that the handsize was 7 (because we assumed dredging) instead of 8. I had mistakenly set it as if I were drawing into the 8th card for turn 2 while on the play, and a 9th card for turn 2 on the draw, even though I knew better otherwise.

I bet you must be correct, and I've got this one quite wrong. I'd appreciate it if you could let me know what I've got wrong because I can't reproduce your results. I'll fix it as soon as I know what I've got wrong here (I even ran it at 100,000,000 hands to see if I just didn't have a significant enough sample size). In light of my previous mistake, I'll clarify my new results.

% of 7-card hands (out of a million hands) with CC and another Land:
4x CC + 8x Rainbow Land: ~27.3%
4x CC + 9x Rainbow Land: ~28.8%
4x CC + 10x Rainbow Land: ~30.2%
4x CC + 11x Rainbow Land: ~31.6%

% of 8-card hands (out of a million hands) with CC and another Land:
4x CC + 8x Rainbow Land: ~33.0%
4x CC + 9x Rainbow Land: ~34.7%
4x CC + 10x Rainbow Land: ~36.0%
4x CC + 11x Rainbow Land: ~37.4%

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By the way, is a 5% chance not worth it?

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You'll notice that both sets of our numbers are between 4-6% difference (5% as you suggested) between 12 and 15 land builds. Getting back to my original point, a 12-land build isn't extremely worse than 15-land builds at activating CC in a vacuum. Both are capable (while your hyperbole suggested otherwise).

Obviously, running more than 12-land isn't just to maximize CC activations. The 5% possible increase is just one benefit.

I think you are right that we should have required a Dredger as well. Just building off the previous script (because I haven't anything better)--

% of 7-card hands with CC + Another Land + Dredger:

Across = # of Dredgers
Down = # of Rainbow Lands (in addition to 4 CC's)

------ 11 ---- 12 ---- 13 ---- 14
8 - ~19.2% ~20.1% ~21.0% ~21.8%
9 - ~20.4% ~21.4% ~22.3% ~23.1%
10- ~21.4% ~22.4% ~23.4% ~24.4%
11- ~22.5% ~23.6% ~24.6% ~25.4%

We obviously disagree on the viability of DDD. So, we might have different perspectives on what hands are keepable and what aren't. This might be the best sort of metric that both of us would use directly on thinking about the viability of CC activations.

@ Yawgmoth'sWill

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...we have more mana than LED-Dredge, and we have a good chance of seeing 2 Lands, so what about playing Zombie Infestation instead of Tireless Tribe? (or just run it as a 1-2-3-off, if you have random slots)

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We'd only have mana roughly half the time (depending on how many land you run) for Zombie Infestation. It also comes into play a turn later than a good permanent-based discard outlet should.




peace,
4eak

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Originally Posted by Yawgmoth'sWill

...we have more mana than LED-Dredge, and we have a good chance of seeing 2 Lands...

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Not quite, we generally run more lands than LED Dredge but not more mana sources. LED can fuel CC too, meaning most LED dredge lists have a total of (at least) 15 mana sources. So, if they draw a CC they're just as likely to be able to use it as our 15 land builds.

As for Infestation, I would love to run that card if we could reliably hit two mana. Actually, with the printing of Bloodghast there might be a viable version of this deck that runs Infrestation and Trade Routes (<- pretty awesome with landfall/resetting Gemstone counters too) as the primary discard outlets.

Out of curiosity (don't think it merits a poll):

Assuming you win the die roll against an unknown opponent/deck (mutual ignorance), does anyone here choose to Draw instead of play?

I've been testing purely on the Draw for a while, and I have to say, I've grown somewhat addicted to it. Few decks can claim to have such little regard for the cards they would draw in later turns (although LEDless is certainly capable, and it is sometimes a necessity in the face of hate, it isn't the goal); and few decks have such a focused set of requirements for an opening hand. Your opening hand is really everything to this sort of deck.

Drawing has some badpoints. It opens you up to discard, CoTV@1, Brainstorm->goodness, Daze, lets your opponent setup, etc. It gives the obvious hint that you are playing a combo deck. Opponents will usually mull and Turn 1 play accordingly. Belcher, for example, really doesn't want the opponent to know what is going to hit them game 1, and often can't afford to give the information (of what deck they are playing) away, despite how much consistency it adds to their opening hands.

Dredge is in a unique position. Giving away information that you are playing combo isn't as devastating. The sorts of hands and turn 1 plays which an opponent would have against a hinted combo deck aren't as potent against Dredge. The interesting part is how many players will mull for hands to their detriment in this regard. The costs of Drawing, instead of playing, are minimized; the benefits are even better for this deck than most combo decks as well.




peace,
4eak

I've DDDed as my standard for Dredge since the Classic LED lists were ported to Legacy, and honestly I think designing your MD under the assumption that you're drawing is the best possible setup.

Going on the DDD plan is the worst if they lead with Thoughtseize.

Edit: If you're simulating, why use iterations? Why not just generate every possible deck configuration?

@ Anusien

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Going on the DDD plan is the worst if they lead with Thoughtseize.

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I don't see Thoughtseize often, although I did admit it is one of the downsides. Anusien, would mind outlining why you don't like DDDing and when you would choose to do it, etc.? Not many people here consider DDD as poor an option as you. Please explain =).

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Why not just generate every possible deck configuration?

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Aren't there a metric ton of permutations?

I was just simulating because it was easy and felt more tangible.




peace,
4eak

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Originally Posted by 4eak

Aren't there a metric ton of permutations?

I was just simulating because it was easy and felt more tangible.

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Yes, but that's why we have computers, to perform difficult and tedious tasks for us.

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Originally Posted by 4eak

@ Anusien



I don't see Thoughtseize often, although I did admit it is one of the downsides. Anusien, would mind outlining why you don't like DDDing and when you would choose to do it, etc.? Not many people here consider DDD as poor an option as you. Please explain =).

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Well, going on the DDD plan without a discard outlet is basically the worst thing ever. It blanks all the Narcoembas, Bridges, Dread Returns and Ichorids you might have in your hand. It's super slow. It doesn't really allow you to be strategic around hate.

Going on the DDD plan with an outlet has a few issues. It opens you up to Daze as well as Force of Will. And it's not actually a good answer to beat counters. You can't rely on it to go the distance. So basically you're saying, "I'm going to dredge once while I give you a chance to find counters." Sure, you might dredge into Narcoemba + Cabal Therapy. It's too unlikely to bet on.

The only time I can see DDD being reasonable is if you have no discard creatures, but Careful Study and Breakthrough. I'd want at least two blue spells before I go on that plan (because against an unknown opponent, you lose if they have a counter). And even then, I think I'd rather take my chances with a mulligan. As a friend of mine said, you're taking too much effort to play around a lesser threat. To me it sort of seems like choosing to draw first with Counterbalance to improve your chances of seeing Top + CB. Sure it might have some benefits, but it's not worth it.

Plus, this is Dredge. It's one of the most fundamentally non-interactive and unfair decks ever. Why would you want to try and slow it down to be more fair?

Edit: Are you just afraid of mulliganing? This deck mulligans better than maybe any deck in history.

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Originally Posted by 4eak

Aren't there a metric ton of permutations?
4eak

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Only about 8.32*10^81 :wink: . Unless you play more than 60 cards of course, and you'd want to run that for each of the different land counts.

For any given decklist, here are 8.32*10^81 different deck orderings. But there are only 386206920 different opening hands.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

For any given decklist, here are 8.32*10^81 different deck orderings. But there are only 386206920 different opening hands.

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I am just curious: Where are these numbers from?

60! is the number of permutations of a deck.

60 choose 7 is the number of opening hands possible.

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Originally Posted by sunshine

As for Infestation, I would love to run that card if we could reliably hit two mana. Actually, with the printing of Bloodghast there might be a viable version of this deck that runs Infrestation and Trade Routes (<- pretty awesome with landfall/resetting Gemstone counters too) as the primary discard outlets.

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This sounds interesting. Enchantment-based discard outlets would be a little harder for the opponent to get rid of, too.

Trade Routes costs a mana to activate, though, so effectively it's gonna cost 2U. And it can only discard lands. For that mana you could play Attunement, which was the only enchantment-based discard outlet besides ZI I could find that doesn't cost mana to activate. Of course, I realize that with only 12-15 lands and without LED, 3 mana might as well be a bajillion. But Attunement looks sorta like a reusable Breakthrough...

This list recently won a largeish tournament.