Quote Originally Posted by DeathwingZERO View Post
The reason for playing the Gemstone Caverns is that there's literally NO drawback with this deck to going second. You have a 40% chance of getting your turn 0 mana, which means you now have option to still play spells, PLUS your up 1 card on your opponent from your draw, because their first turn plays are typically harmless (if you didn't see Caverns).
No you are not up 1 card because you have to pitch one to Caverns.
Also, if you are on the draw and drop this, you have a turn 0 possibility for the kill, albiet around 5%. But at the same time, you run a very likely chance to setup for the kill via Brainstorm and Mystical Tutor, and are already at a +1 mana source by your first turn, making the 1st turn that much faster (as it's now the average kill turn, not second as it is without Caverns/ESG), and you are still unable to get hit with any Counterspells, and just Daze or FoW/MisD in counter wars, and Stifle rather than Trickbind post-Flash resolving. The faster you are, the less hate there is to take you down.
I still fail to see how going first turn Island, Spirit Guide, Flash is inferior to Caverns, Guide, Flash. In both cases your opponent never gets a drawphase/mainphase. First turn Island, waiting until opponent eot then Brainstorm/Mystical Tutor accomplishes the same as Caverns, Brainstorm/Tutor again without pitching a card.
This also helps in the mirror match, as you will generally be faster than the opponent on average by a turn, so if the luck of the coin flip puts you at drawing, your still a 40% chance to win before or at the same time they can (assuming they don't play Caverns, obviously meaning they'd want to go first).
As I already said Gemstone Caverns are good when your opponent wins the coinflip and wants to go first. But even then you need the Turn 0 win in hand to make it any better than the turn 1 win the opposing Flash deck can produce (not counting the counterbattles, you may be able to Brainstorm off Caverns to see 3 cards but you still have only 5 cards in hand from the start.)

My deck lost no consistency at all by putting in the Caverns and the ESGs, they take the place of Lotus Petals and Islands very well. Counting your rarely going to see more than one land source on the table, and the deck is already so "give me win or give me death" post-FS with 8 Pacts, it seems better to just win asap than win when convenient.
I doubt that, however having only played about 20 games with the deck myself I can't tell yet who's right or wrong.
In addition, the only possible hate to care about when going Caverns vs Islands (or more fetches), is that Caverns can be Wasted, but if my opponent ruins his possible Daze/Stifle play on Wasteland to kill off my Gemstone before my 1st turn, I'm all for it. I have a better chance of drawing my 11 "true" blue mana sources than he does having a godhand of multiple viable FoW now, and I still require less conventional mana sources to go off than most of my opponents would to stop me.
I played 6 games versus Stax and Wasteland is a problem. Not that big of a problem for the deck but why play directly into it when you can just get basic Island and not worry?