I saw that most of the top Legacy decks run way more mana or land-equivalent cards than we do. Eldrazi and Dark Depths run 30 mana/land cards, Delver decks and Miracles run 28 when you consider cantrips as nothing more than a way to make a land drop. The deck with the fewest lands/mana is DnT. They run 24 lands and 4 Vials (which are sort of a mana source) so their manabase is very similar to ours, but they have a much lower curve and are also monoW. I wondered if I upped the number of lands in the deck from a standard high of 24 up to 26 lands how that would affect land drops and Ringleader reveals. I might as well run the numbers on land drops and Ringleaders. Assuming a 60 card deck and the standard high end of 24 lands vs 26 lands, and 32 Goblins vs 30 Goblins, what are the basic questions we need to answer?...
1) What are the odds of blanking with Ringleader? 32Goblins 4.5% .... 30Goblins 6% ... 1.5% difference
2) What are the odds of hitting 4 goblins off Ringleader? 32G 6.9% ... 30G 5.2% ... 1.7% difference
3) What are the odds of hitting 2 or more goblins off Ringleader? 32G 73.2% ... 30G 68.1% ... 5.1% difference
4) What are the odds of having 0 lands in your opening hand? 24Lands 2.2% ... 26Lands 1.4% ... 0.8% difference
5)What are the odds of having 2 or more lands in your opening hand? 24L 85.7% ... 26L 89.6% ... 3.9% difference
6) What are the odds of having 6 or more lands in your opening hand? 24L 1.3% ... 26L 2.2% ... 0.9% difference
7) What are the odds of having 2 or more lands T2 on the play? 24L 91.0% ... 26L 93.8% ... 2.8% difference
8) What are the odds of having 3 or more lands T3 on the play? 24L 78.9% ... 26L 84.6% ... 5.7% difference
9) What are the odds of having 4 or more lands T4 on the play? 24L 63.2% ... 26L 71.6% ... 8.4% difference
10) What are the odds of having 5 or more lands T5 on the play? 24L 46.7% ... 26L 56.7% ... 10.0% difference
11) What are the odds of having 6 or more lands T6 on the play? 24L 31.9% ... 26L 42.0% ... 10.1% difference
10) What are the odds of having 7 or more lands T7 on the play? 24L 20.2% ... 26L 29.0% ... 8.8% difference
Here's what jumps out at me from the numbers: Those 2 lands that are no longer goblins cards don't have a huge impact on ringleader performance. Whether you're running 30 or 32 goblins your odds of blanking or hitting four off Ringleader are pretty slim. And more likely than not, you're drawing two or more goblins either way. Running a higher concentration of Goblins in your deck will no doubt make Ringleader performance marginally better, but a 2-goblin-card-difference will not change the expected results of a Ringleader in a meaningful way. TL;DR - Your Ringleaders are generally drawing you two cards either way.
Now here's a more impactful area: Land Drops. How those two extra lands affect land drops is much more significant. Early land drops do not see much difference between a 24 and 26 land build. Your chances of being mana screwed or flooded T1 are both pretty slim. What becomes significant is your ability to make land drops as the game goes on. Your odds of hitting your 3rd and 4th land drops are fairly better with 26 lands, but the real difference shows up on the 5th land drop, because with 26 lands you are more likely than not to hit your 5th land drop, with 24 lands you are more likely than not to miss your 5th land drop.
I'm not going to try to calculate odds of mana-flood because there are two many variables. I have lost plenty of games to mana-flood where I still drew 3-4 non-land cards. Those games feel like flooding because you drew the wrong non-land cards, not because you drew too many lands. It's obvious to assume that a 26 land build would flood out more often, I just can't think of how to define "flooding" for the sake of calculating.
As always, all odds are brought to you by Stattrek!
https://stattrek.com/online-calculat...geometric.aspx
