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Thread: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

  1. #61
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Good point.

    Then your options with Trickery are:
    A) Cascade creature (8-16 hits)
    B) Creative Technique (4 hits)
    C) Tibalt's Trickery (3 hits)

    C -> Complete fizzle. Revealed Trickery has no legal targets. Pass the turn.
    B -> Demonstrate and go off with good consistency due to extra branches (but opponent gets free spells)
    A -> Cascade creature could hit either:
    Creative Technique (4 hits) -> Demonstrate and win with high %
    Throes/Trickery (6 hits) -> Possible fizzle if it hits another Trickery

    So the fizzle rate is approx 3/(3+4+12) (hit Trickery right away) + 12/(3+4+12)*[6/(6+4)]*[2/(2+4+11)] (hit cascader into Throes/Trickery into Trickery fizzle) = 15.8% + 4.4% > 20%
    There will also be increased fizzling from Creative Technique lines, but I have treated those as negligibly small if you always Demonstrate (though that increases risk of opponent disruption).

    You could improve those odds by running 16 cascaders instead of 12, but then there's much less room for lands. 12 cascaders already means cutting 4 lands. With 40 lands + 4 creative technique + 8 trickery/Throes, there's only room for 8 cascaders. With 8 cascaders and 40 lands that fizzle rate becomes: 3/(3+4+8) + 8/(3+4+8)*[6/(6+4)*[2/(2+4+7)] = 20% + 4.9% ~= 25%

    You could also run fewer copies of Throes/Trickery and more cascade creatures, but then that speed line becomes less available.

    Overall the Throes/Trickery tech introduces more variance, more fizzling, and more losses to a single counterspell. For that tradeoff it adds +1 turn speed. The question is how often is that speed worth it vs how much does the consistency loss hurt more? It deserves testing. But that is a high rate of error added.

    A possible list to test for the faster line:
    //Creatures: 12
    4 Boarding Party
    4 Aurora Phoenix
    4 Maelstrom Wanderer

    //Spells: 12
    4 Tibalt's Trickery
    4 Throes of Chaos
    4 Creative Technique

    //Lands: 36
    4 Sandstone Needle
    4 Dwarven Ruins
    4 Sulfur Vent
    4 Hickory Woodlot
    4 Saprazzan Skerry
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 Crystal Vein
    4 City of Traitors
    4 Gemstone Caverns

    //Sideboard: 15
    4 Pyrokinesis
    4 Maddening Hex
    2 Otawara, Soaring City
    2 Karakas
    2 Boseiju Who Endures
    1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn


    You could also try to decrease the fizzle rate by running fewer Tibalt's Trickery and more multicascaders. Ex:
    -2 Trickery, +2 Apex Devastator
    Fizzle rate drops to: 1/(1+4+14) (hit other Trickery) + 0 (cascade creature cannot result in Trickery -> Trickery) > 5%
    But there will be more lines where Creative Technique or Cascade reveals Throes and there are 0 Trickery left in library (that branch fizzles).

  2. #62

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    ...
    So the fizzle rate is approx 3/(3+4+12) (hit Trickery right away) + 12/(3+4+12)*[6/(6+4)]*[2/(2+4+11)] (hit cascader into Throes/Trickery into Trickery fizzle) = 15.8% + 4.4% > 20%
    There will also be increased fizzling from Creative Technique lines, but I have treated those as negligibly small if you always Demonstrate (though that increases risk of opponent disruption).
    ...
    I did not expect trickery to be poisonous to the combo that way. I guess I'm too used to thinking in terms of decks with half as many lands and took for granted that it wouldn't wreck itself very often.

    Even really squeezing it - say by splitting with Throes with Violent Outburst and adding 4 more "cascade creatures" - the initial fizzle is still 3/25 which is quite high. That makes the "go fast" plan look pretty bad to me. Danger of cool things rears its head again. Rational's suggestion of using throes as a sideboard amplifier may have a lot more merit.

  3. #63
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by rufus View Post
    I did not expect trickery to be poisonous to the combo that way. I guess I'm too used to thinking in terms of decks with half as many lands and took for granted that it wouldn't wreck itself very often.

    Even really squeezing it - say by splitting with Throes with Violent Outburst and adding 4 more "cascade creatures" - the initial fizzle is still 3/25 which is quite high. That makes the "go fast" plan look pretty bad to me. Danger of cool things rears its head again. Rational's suggestion of using throes as a sideboard amplifier may have a lot more merit.
    It was a good suggestion. That's why I ran some numbers to check. Unfortunately the deck is a very tightly-tuned engine and has little flexibility for alterations.

    It might be simpler to achieve that +1 turn via 4x Gemstone Caverns (Turn 2 Technique) or 4x Chancellor of the Annex (-1 turn for opponent).

    More land-based disruption like Otawara and Boseiju could work too.

    Another option could be to replace Leyline of the Void with Endurance. Then you have cascade into Endurance (or sometimes Evoke Endurance) as interaction vs graveyard combo, like Maddening Hex is vs Storm. The good thing about Endurance is that it doubles as a fair win condition so you're still adding pressure while disrupting, even if the combo misses (and it can recycle your Creative Techniques). Whereas combo cascading into Leyline is a bust. Faerie Macabre is another option that's better in opening hand but worse to cascade into.

  4. #64
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Warning: Extensive but still Rough Approximations ("Fermi Calculations") Ahead


    I've been playing around with this idea and I do like it a lot, with some reservations and thoughts for modification. I had an anecdotal observation from running simulated games over and over for the past couple days though and I wanted to run some numbers, because when I'm playing with configurations with 4 Throes and 4 Trickery I keep actually fizzling. It feels like the fizzle states are being underappreciated here [EDIT: Up to when I last posted that is; it appears they were not underappreciated by FTW in the intervening time] because

    1) The new piece of machinery [Throes + Trickery] being added to the machine has two distinct parts.

    2) The composition of the deck changes as the combo chain propagates itself; especially as Trickery arbitrarily mills cards out of the deck and prevents them from being part of all further loops. It is rather common for the proportion of these two pieces to fall out of alignment (More Throes than Trickery in the deck, or vice versa) or even start out of alignment based on opening hands.

    3) The effective "fizzle" states, then, are more than just Trickery into Trickery. They are also Any Cascader into Throes with no Trickery left to hit, or a chain that simply fails to get a sufficient board presence before fizzling, which is more possible now since hitting Trickery off a Cascade often has the effective result of "shrinking" the chain since you need to either counter one of your own spells or "sacrifice" that propagating branch of the chain.

    For example, let's say you are lucky enough to have a 4 card hand of Throes, Sandstone Needle, Crystal Vein, Otawara. This is ostensibly the kind of starting hand we want because it's not removing any pieces of the engine from the deck, and it goes off Turn 2 through any discard effects (which would be more represented by the fast combo decks this configuration is aimed at). You are guaranteed here to hit Trickery off of the Throes, but after this point we start making relevant "dice rolls".

    Depending on how the deck is constructed / how you sideboarded, let's assume what's left in the library looks something like this:

    Prime Table

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    3 Throes
    3 Trickery


    So if we hit a Trickery next, we fail, which is a 13.6% the deck fizzles from this single outcome alone. Let's start a running tally of probability space where we find failures to get a sense of scale for this whole thing.

    Let's be optimistic again and assume that if we hit an Emrakul, Maelstrom Wanderer, or Creative Technique, we'll be successful 100% of the time in killing that turn. From my limited anecdotal experience this is not the case, but let's make that simplifying assumption. The next thing we should investigate, than is what happens if we hit another Throes. Well, that also has a 13.6% chance of happening, and brings us to this table:

    Table A

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    2 Throes
    2 Trickery


    10% chance of fail outright here. 10% Chance we hit Throes again, and go to the following table.

    Table A - 2

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    1 Throes
    1 Trickery


    Only about a 5.6% chance we fail here.

    Let me construct a crude visual to highlight what I'm doing here.



    So you add up these cases and we're already at about a 15% failure chance just from "hugging the bottom" of this hypothetical probability tree. These aren't the only "failure" branches though.

    Let's go back to the "Prime Table" and investigate what happens in the portion of probability space where you hit a Cascade 6-Drop next, which you have ~32% chance of doing on that table. That would force you onto the following:

    Table B


    4 Creative Technique
    3 Throes
    3 Trickery


    From Table B we would have a 30% chance of hitting Throes which, if we assume that the milling off the subsequent Trickery does not relevantly alter the probabilities, brings us to

    Table B-1

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    2 Throes
    2 Trickery


    On which we have a 10% Chance of failure. 10% of 30% of 32% is about 1%, so let's say we have explicitly found 16% chance of failstates so far.

    The really interesting branch off of Table B, though, I think, is if we hit a Trickery. That would bring us to

    Table B-2

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    2 Throes
    1 Trickery


    Remember, this is approximately 10% of our total probability space as a whole (30% of 32% to get here). From this point on, we have an unbalanced number of Throes and Trickeries (and again, remember we made the optimistic assumptions that we've had balanced numbers all along without the secret complications of cards in hand or cards milled by trickery, which both introduce a bias in the direction of failstates by not effect all outcomes equally due to the special nature of hitting Throes without a corresponding Trickery). Let's try to get a sense of the new flavors of failstates that we have found here.

    Emerging from Table B-2, yes, we can hit a Trickery (1/19th of this section of probability space) [so make that running tally now ~16.5% total failure rate], but we can also hit a Throes and effectively turn the last copy of Throes in our deck into a brick. It's also important to note that we haven't actually generated value yet. The Trickery we hit effectively "erased" the cascader we used to hit it.

    You can continue to make detailed calculations here, but when you combine our already 16.5% fail-rate but given how generous the assumptions have been and the amount of unexplored probability space I feel pretty confident in making the assumption that the actual "failrate" here is north of 20%. Anecdotally, I'm seeing a failure rate closer to 25%, including boardstates where I just don't deal 20 damage before passing the turn back because Trickeries both mill cards out of the deck as well as force me to choose between eroding the stack or ending a chain of value.

    Takeaways:

    So, right off the bat I'm going to say that I don't like the idea of trying to utilize these cards mainboard to buy a turn at both the large costs of additional fail-rate as well as susceptibility to counterspells. I appreciate, as I believe FTW said above, the difference between maindeck and sideboard is really just a meta-expectation, but there are compounding costs here and I think throwing away the robustness and resiliency that sets the combo apart to try to buy a turn of speed for some portion of kept Game 1 hands is ill-adviced in most reasonable metagames.

    However, there is something here that I still find extremely interesting. The fact that against fast combo this can turn a 3 card hand of Red-Sol, Untapped-Sol, Throes into a real competitor that is highly insulated from discard effects (since Throes has Retrace and the deck has 40 lands) is not only huge in creating a competitive hand in those matchups, it buys you a very strong ability to mulligan to such a hand, which in turn let's us consider implementing these cards in a slightly different way.


    I want to spend a moment going over a different set of numbers. These are the hypergeometric calculations for mulliganing to such a hand (Red-Sol + Untapped-Sol + Throes) assuming 11 of both of the first two categories are in the deck.

    If we (I'm assuming "board in" but feel free to play around with maindeck variations as you wish) 4 Throes and 4 Trickery, assuming we're willing to Mulligan down to 3 in such a matchup, the math looks like this:

    If [W;X;Y;Z] is the hypergeometric probability of getting Z or more Successes with a sample size of Y with X possible successes in a total pool of size W. (Meaning W unaccounted for cards in deck that could be drawn, X "hits" in the deck, a Y card hand looking for Z or more copies of a card) than ...

    A = [60;4;7;1] = 0.3995
    B = [59;11;6;1] = 0.72765
    C = [58;11;5;1] = 0. 66523
    1-(1-(ABC))^5 = 0.6585

    We have about a 66% chance of mulliganing to a hand that has all 3 pieces we want. What if, however, we only boarded in 3 Throes and 3 Trickery?

    D = [60;3;7;1] = 0.31543
    1-(1-(DBC))^5 = 0.5633


    We only lose ~9% of probability space where we were previous getting such a hand but now we are not. That's not an insignificant number, but the kicker is how much it increases our chance of successfully comboing off by reducing the additional cards that can get "caught in the wheels" of the machine after the first Throes->Trickery cycle from 6 to 4, which is a huge decrease on a % basis. Let's try to mirror exactly what we did at the top in this new regime.

    Prime Table-X

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    2 Throes
    2 Trickery


    So, after we play our Throes from hand and hit the first trickery, if we hit a Trickery next, we fail, which is 10% the deck fizzles from this single outcome alone.

    If we hit another Throe, which also has a 10% chance of happening, it brings us to this table:

    Table A-X

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    1 Throes
    1 Trickery


    5.6% chance of fail outright here, which of course is only that much of a subsection of the 10% chance above, so really this is an additional 0.6% chance.

    Let's go back to Prime Table-X and investigate what happens in the portion of probability space where you hit a Cascade 6-Drop next, which you have a 35% chance of doing on that table. That would force you onto the following:

    Table B-X


    4 Creative Technique
    2 Throes
    2 Trickery


    From Table B we would have a 12.5% chance of hitting Throes which, if we assume that the milling off the subsequent Trickery does not relevantly alter the probabilities, brings us to

    Table B-1-X

    1 Emrakul
    4 Maelstom Wanderer
    4 Creative Technique
    7 Cascade 6-Drops
    1 Throes
    1 Trickery


    On which we have a 5.6% Chance of immediate failure. 5.6% of 12.5% of 35% is about 0.2%, so that's a total of 10.2% failstate so far.

    Now, did you notice the really dramatic geometric thing that happened here?

    Our first order failure risk (immediately hitting a Trickery from our "Prime" table) went down over 25% (from 13.6% of all probability space to a clean 10%).

    The second order failure risk we calculated dropped 80%!! (From 1% to 0.2%).


    There's an intuitive geometric reason for this. Look at how those bottom "turn-offs" of the image above go.

    13.6%

    10% of 13.6%

    5.6% of 10% of 13.6%

    Now compare that to the equivalent in these new charts.

    10%

    5.6% of 10%

    0% of 5.6% of 10%

    Holistically speaking, what's happening is that every piece of the products in calculating the failstates of probability space are going down "1 order" in some unexplicated geometric structure. Which means that the magnitudes of those actual risks are falling off a cliff. I'm willing to bet, and my limited tabletop simulating supports the idea, that the actual risk of failure here is only 12 to 13% tops. If each second order risk is a product of 2 numbers that are now both smaller, and each third order risk is a product of 3 numbers that are now all smaller or have now hit 0 ... for the sake of this kind of approximation, I think's it's safe to say that in a 3 Throes + 3 Trickery set up, we can say that the chance of failing to combo off a cast Throes is around 12.5%, which is half of the risk of failure that I'm approximating for the 4 Throes + 4 Trickery set up.

    Now obviously this is all a little rough, but let me end with one other quick calculation.

    If 4 Throes + 4 Trickery has a 66% of giving you the hand you want with mulligans included, and a 75% success rate, than

    .66 x .75 = 0.495

    You have about a 49.5% chance of succeeding at Turn 2-ing that combo deck with 8 cards boarded in.

    If 3 Throes + 3 Trickery has a 56% of giving you the hand you want with mulligans included, and an 87.5% success rate, than

    0.56 x 0.875 = 49%

    The difference between the two calculations is 0.5%.

    One 200th of the time.

    I'll restate that I really don't like this as a maindeck plan, and even sideboard by itself the numbers aren't as great as we'd probably like them to be; but I really don't think it's an 8-card package. I think it's a 6-card package, which means it doesn't have to come in alone.

    TL;DR Conclusion:

    I strongly, strongly suspect that

    4 Throes + 4 Trickery = Inefficient

    3 Throes + 3 Trickery = Efficient

    If you're sideboarding this in I don't recommend wasting 2 slots on clogging up the deck's internal engine. When you only need a 3 card hand to win, you can mulligan for it.


    EDIT:

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post

    So the fizzle rate is approx 3/(3+4+12) (hit Trickery right away) + 12/(3+4+12)*[6/(6+4)]*[2/(2+4+11)] (hit cascader into Throes/Trickery into Trickery fizzle) = 15.8% + 4.4% > 20%
    There will also be increased fizzling from Creative Technique lines, but I have treated those as negligibly small if you always Demonstrate (though that increases risk of opponent disruption).

    You could improve those odds by running 16 cascaders instead of 12, but then there's much less room for lands. 12 cascaders already means cutting 4 lands. With 40 lands + 4 creative technique + 8 trickery/Throes, there's only room for 8 cascaders. With 8 cascaders and 40 lands that fizzle rate becomes: 3/(3+4+8) + 8/(3+4+8)*[6/(6+4)*[2/(2+4+7)] = 20% + 4.9% ~= 25%

    You could also run fewer copies of Throes/Trickery and more cascade creatures, but then that speed line becomes less available.
    Ha. I think you took to the math quicker than I did. Egg on my face for composing an analysis then posting it before reading new posts from the past 48 hours.

    I still like the idea of a smaller Throes package out of the board though.

  5. #65
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    In fact, it may end up being correct to do something like

    3 Throes

    2 Trickery

    [A Collection of Different 1-of 3 Drops bombs to bring in matchup-dependent to put a strong "floor" beneath a lot of the lines that would otherwise be failstates as well as another hate-piece that could be cast Turn 2 from hand, like Maddening Hex vs. Spell Combo decks]

  6. #66
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    3 Throes + 2 Trickery has a much lower chance of those Trickery -> Trickery fizzles, some chance of Throes fizzles (no Trickery left), and yet still gives you a decent chance of the Turn 2 Throes in the opener. That may be a good balance to test. It's only a 5-card SB package.

    With 4 Creative Technique + 4 Maelstrom Wanderer, hopefully there are enough branching tools that cascading into a dead Throes mainly happens once there are multiple branches, so it doesn't end the turn. Perhaps adding +1 Apex Devastator would help those odds too.

  7. #67

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    With 4 Creative Technique + 4 Maelstrom Wanderer, hopefully there are enough branching tools that cascading into a dead Throes mainly happens once there are multiple branches, so it doesn't end the turn. Perhaps adding +1 Apex Devastator would help those odds too.
    Roughly speaking, the impact of changing a card is going to be something like [number of similar cards before]/[number of similar cards after]. So adding one apex devastator to 4 creative techniques and 4 wanderers is going to help, but it's not going to make a huge difference. (We are dealing with small numbers and no replacement, so it can be possible for things like that to make a big difference after cards are used up, but that's not the case here.)

    In contrast, going from 4 to 3 trickeries reduces the relative chance to trickery fizzle by 25 or 33%.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    3 Throes + 2 Trickery has a much lower chance of those Trickery -> Trickery fizzles, some chance of Throes fizzles (no Trickery left), and yet still gives you a decent chance of the Turn 2 Throes in the opener. That may be a good balance to test. It's only a 5-card SB package.
    The maddening hex / sideboard bomb kind of stuff does allow running fewer trickeries e.g. 3 throes, 2 maddening hex / whatever 1 trickery. Hitting hex off the trickery is something to want and the trickery->trickery fizzle rate becomes 0.

    It's a pity the mana base can't support firing on turn 2 and then on turn 3 reliably. If it did, it might be possible to substitute a Last Chance effect in for one of the trickery spells. ... I imagine that many of the fast decks that you'd be looking to race won't really be stopped by something like Solitary Confinement.

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by rufus View Post
    . ... I imagine that many of the fast decks that you'd be looking to race won't really be stopped by something like Solitary Confinement.
    A one-of phyrexian unlife could be great vs non BWish storm, as the galaxy burning takes care of pesky gobs, and I don't think they would bring in removal/bounce.

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Okay, continuing to play with the 3 Throes, 2 Trickery, 1 Targeted-Hatepiece modular-SB-package-idea, what would the 1 custom card to be able to cascade into with Throes against BR Reanimator be, knowing that it would be after they've had a chance to reanimate some fatty? I can't seem to find a card that just says ... "Black creatures now have an upkeep cost = to their CMC" or anything like that.

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Oblivion Ring or equivalents to remove the threat?
    Gilded Drake to steal the threat?

    Ensnaring Bridge seems bad for both of you.

    Light of Day is the closest, but that's CMC 4

    Seems Sandwurm Convergence is the only card that's a reverse Moat, was hoping there was some cheaper Enchantment that just punished flying
    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWhale View Post
    Gross, other formats. I puked in my mouth a little.

  11. #71

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Rationalist View Post
    Okay, continuing to play with the 3 Throes, 2 Trickery, 1 Targeted-Hatepiece modular-SB-package-idea, what would the 1 custom card to be able to cascade into with Throes against BR Reanimator be, knowing that it would be after they've had a chance to reanimate some fatty? I can't seem to find a card that just says ... "Black creatures now have an upkeep cost = to their CMC" or anything like that.
    Are Restore Balance or Inevitable Betrayal too out there? With Betrayal especially you can get an Archon to kill their guy and maybe enough of a board to just win with, depending on if you hit Trickery first and how the branches go. Balance is better against them making 2+ guys but if they make 2 guys on their turn I suspect you were dead anyways.

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by LennonMarx View Post
    Are Restore Balance or Inevitable Betrayal too out there? With Betrayal especially you can get an Archon to kill their guy and maybe enough of a board to just win with, depending on if you hit Trickery first and how the branches go. Balance is better against them making 2+ guys but if they make 2 guys on their turn I suspect you were dead anyways.
    Well, okay, bonus to Inevitable Betrayal: It could serve double-duty in the same role against Oops All Spells.

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    What is the consensus optimal number of 6 mana cascades?

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    I'm currently happy with 11, specifically the suite

    4 Boarding Party

    3 Aurora Phoenix

    2 Sweet-Gum Recluse

    2 Let the Galaxy Burn

    but as one person I can't speak to the word "consensus" on my own by definition. For what it's worth I put a lot of thought and time into this, but as I'd be biased towards overestimating the quality of thought I can't give you a stronger testimonial so it's probably worth thinking about critically on your own at least a little. EDIT: I've edited the opening post of this thread now so you can read the individual card description portion for some justification of my thinking there.
    Last edited by Rationalist; 02-07-2023 at 02:19 PM.

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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Alright, after jamming more games with the updated list locally I'm happy enough with the list (in particular a variation of the sideboard plan that was listed here) I'm going to rewrite the opening post of the thread.

    Having played around with the probability trees, the trick was to make the sideboard package 4x Throes + 2x Trickery. Game 2 on the draw against Elves last night I just mulliganed down to 3 cards (Throes, Red Sol, Untapped Sol) and won and Turn 2, which the deck can pretty consistently do now if it wants to race. The trick to making the probability sufficientg was keeping Throes on x4, but realizing that 2x Trickery was the sweet spot for minimizing fail-states. In order for the numbers to work ideally you need to board out some 6-drops in these situations as 6 drop cascaders bias probabilities to the bottom of the possibility tree, but I'll write up a sideboard guide where that sentence makes more sense.

    4x Boarding Party
    4x Creative Technique
    4x Maelstrom Wanderer
    3x Aurora Phoenix
    2x Sweet-Gum Recluse
    2x Let the Galaxy Burn
    1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

    4x Gemstone Cavern
    4x Sandstone Needle
    4x Saprazzan Skerry
    4x Hickory Woodlot
    4x Ancient Tomb
    4x City of Traitors
    4x Dwarven Ruin
    4x Otawara, Soaring City
    3x Crystal Vein
    3x Sulfur Vent
    1x Havenwood Battleground
    1x Mountain

    Sideboard:

    4x Throes of Chaos
    4x Pyrokinesis
    2x Maddening Hex
    2x Tibalt's Trickery
    2x Boom Pile
    1x Aeve, Progenitor Ooze

    I'm feeling very good about this current list. The only two immediate points of being notably sub-optimal to me seem to be the chance that the Havenwood Battleground is supposed to be a 4th Crystal Vein, and that Boompiles are a naturally inconsistent card (but I'm unaware of a replacement that does their same job).

    I'm going to write up a more detailed opening post based on this list.

  16. #76

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Trinisphere and other similar cards are strong against the deck, expecially if you can't bounce them due to the lack of Otawara, Soaring City or blue mana, also due to Blood Moon effects or land destruction. I was thinking about Jokulhaups, specifically against Red Stompy, but could also have a role against other decks, expecially midrange and control. Mississipi River runs about 40 lands, so could that card replace Boompile in the sideboard?
    Last edited by Alex_UNLIMITED; 02-11-2023 at 06:55 AM.

  17. #77
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Do you have enough green mana to support Boseiju, which would help answer hate like Trinisphere or Ethersworn Canonist?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rationalist View Post
    Having played around with the probability trees, the trick was to make the sideboard package 4x Throes + 2x Trickery. Game 2 on the draw against Elves last night I just mulliganed down to 3 cards (Throes, Red Sol, Untapped Sol) and won and Turn 2, which the deck can pretty consistently do now if it wants to race. The trick to making the probability sufficientg was keeping Throes on x4, but realizing that 2x Trickery was the sweet spot for minimizing fail-states.
    This makes sense and sounds like a good compromise.

    Did your probability trees also account for fail states where you "go off" but mid-combo cascade into a Throes with no Trickery left, ending the chain? I ignored those in my math above, but they become more probable with a bigger gap between the number of Throes and the number of Trickeries. Maybe it's still small enough to make 4 Throes optimal. Or maybr you can still win with the creatures you get before the chain ends.

    In order for the numbers to work ideally you need to board out some 6-drops in these situations as 6 drop cascaders bias probabilities to the bottom of the possibility tree, but I'll write up a sideboard guide where that sentence makes more sense.
    How does that help the odds? A higher cmc cascader will still cascade into the same things (or a 6cmc, which will cascade into the same things). Or does that only apply when the higher cmc ones all have multi-cascade?

  18. #78

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Alex_UNLIMITED View Post
    Trinisphere and other similar cards are strong against the deck, expecially if you can't bounce them due to the lack of Otawara or blue mana, also due to Blood Moon effects or land destruction. I was thinking about Jokulhaups, specifically against Red Stompy, but could also have a role against other decks, expecially midrange and control. Mississipi River runs about 40 lands, so could that card replace Boom Pile in the sideboard?
    I'm not sure how Jokulhaups makes sense as an answer to an enchantment like Blood Moon. I guess it can clip Magus of the Moon but you'd still be waiting until turn 6 - at the earliest - to fire it off. It's also not so clear that you want to cast it while going off, and leaving it in the deck instead also has issues. I'm not sure how well it works in practice, but something like Nevinyrral's Disk makes more sense as an alternative to the boom pile to me.

    One thing that makes blood moon - in particular - difficult to deal with is that red has very limited access to enchantment removal, and I think you need to use different approaches to answer it and 3sphere, but if you really want something to split the difference you could try Chaos Warp.

  19. #79
    Well, Attempted Rationalism at least.
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Alex_UNLIMITED View Post
    Trinisphere and other similar cards are strong against the deck, expecially if you can't bounce them due to the lack of Otawara, Soaring City or blue mana, also due to Blood Moon effects or land destruction. I was thinking about Jokulhaups, specifically against Red Stompy, but could also have a role against other decks, expecially midrange and control. Mississipi River runs about 40 lands, so could that card replace Boompile in the sideboard?
    Well something certainly should so I encourage the experimentation, but I'm skeptical about Jokulhaups. Getting to 6 mana against Blood Moon seems like quite an ask and even then you're resetting yourself as well. Against Moon Stompy I'm probably going for the Throes + Trickery package and hoping they can't kill me or Trinisphere by the end of their T3.

    I used to board in Magma Opus for the matchup and I might again since I'm consider running 2 of them back just as anti-Daze tech against blue tempo decks, but there's no super clean answer I can think of for trinisphere.

    If you're worried about specifically Trinisphere and are attempting to 1-for-1 it from hand, why not try Chaos Warp / Audacious Swap? (Swap in case you plan to use it in matchups where you'd be bringing in Throes + Trickery). 3 / 4 mana red spell you can cast in their endstep and then go off seems better then 6 mana reset the entire board.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Do you have enough green mana to support Boseiju, which would help answer hate like Trinisphere or Ethersworn Canonist?
    I'm skeptical. I felt slightly weak back when I was on like 4x Boseiju, and I'm less in on green now. The Gemstone Caverns help, but it still strikes me as unreliable. If someone really wanted they could up the green count by swapping the Sulfur Vents for Tinder Farms and the Mountain for a Taiga. This would pretty comfortably bring the deck up to 9 reliable green sources + 4 Gemstone Cavern. Swapping out Sulfur Vents for Tinder Farms would make Maelstrom Wanderer harder to hardcast, though, and given how useful that's proven to be in the Delver matchup I don't personally feel incentivized to weaken the Delver match in order to strengthen the Trinisphere matchup. I run into Delver far, far more often than Trinispheres.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    This makes sense and sounds like a good compromise.

    Did your probability trees also account for fail states where you "go off" but mid-combo cascade into a Throes with no Trickery left, ending the chain? I ignored those in my math above, but they become more probable with a bigger gap between the number of Throes and the number of Trickeries. Maybe it's still small enough to make 4 Throes optimal. Or maybr you can still win with the creatures you get before the chain ends.
    Only to the degree I actually calculated it out, but in the post after your math you can see me starting the original 4x/4x math on my own and then kind of abandoning it after a couple layers and I didn't go too much farther on 4x/2x before I just kind of handwaved it as better and started doing simulations. Against something like storm I'm currently boarding in 4x Throes, 2x Trickery, 1x Maddening Hex, to give those cases a "floor" of sorts. Of course I don't have an adequate modular "floor" to board in in all matchups where I'd be switching over to the T2 plan.

    Anecdotally, though, I've physically goldfished with it something around a couple hundred times and it's relatively infrequent since you have to "come back down to 4 or less CMC" twice first without branching and the final time it's just 2x Throes or less that are in the deck for that final chance not to brick.

    I definitely couldn't write a rigorous paper on the math of it as it stands but I've been shuffling it up like that for weeks now and I feel pretty confident 4x/2x is the right mixture if you want a Throes package, and given how much it addresses I definitely think you do.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    How does that help the odds? A higher cmc cascader will still cascade into the same things (or a 6cmc, which will cascade into the same things). Or does that only apply when the higher cmc ones all have multi-cascade?
    Hitting a 6-Drop essentially "grays out" 5 hits that aren't bricks it could have otherwise hit since we're introducing the risk of bricking to the deck.

  20. #80
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Rationalist View Post
    Only to the degree I actually calculated it out, but in the post after your math you can see me starting the original 4x/4x math on my own and then kind of abandoning it after a couple layers and I didn't go too much farther on 4x/2x before I just kind of handwaved it as better and started doing simulations. Against something like storm I'm currently boarding in 4x Throes, 2x Trickery, 1x Maddening Hex, to give those cases a "floor" of sorts. Of course I don't have an adequate modular "floor" to board in in all matchups where I'd be switching over to the T2 plan.

    Anecdotally, though, I've physically goldfished with it something around a couple hundred times and it's relatively infrequent since you have to "come back down to 4 or less CMC" twice first without branching and the final time it's just 2x Throes or less that are in the deck for that final chance not to brick.

    I definitely couldn't write a rigorous paper on the math of it as it stands but I've been shuffling it up like that for weeks now and I feel pretty confident 4x/2x is the right mixture if you want a Throes package, and given how much it addresses I definitely think you do.
    Seems good enough. Just curious.

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