I understand your point of view and am not disagreeing with your path but one and a half turns? The protected versions are very solidly turn 3 for me with more turn 1/2 wins than 4+ wins, are you really saying your average turn is 1.5?
Yes, the pure-speed deck averages a win by turn 1.5-1.75.

Protected versions can improve their ratio by willingly playing the combo without protection in a significant portion of their games (sometimes you don't have a protection piece, or you can only choose one or the other, etc.), and some may find this to be the best way to play (I know there are cases where I'd be willing to do it). In that case, as troopa' put it, "you could just have the protection when you draw it, and when you don't draw it, have more gas."

Almost guaranteeing protection takes a bit more effort though. If you force yourself to play protection before comboing off (and keep records of it), you'll see that the margin widens quite a bit.

The protection strategy assumes that it will be winning aggro/combo matches long before AdN becomes destabilized through lifeloss, remaining undisrupted by discard, and pre-emptively answering blue in the main. And, for the most part, I believe this is true of protected ANT decks. However, in my testing, the lifecost averages of successful AdN's rise as you water the deck down for protection, and AdN can become an unstable engine by turn 3 against many aggressive decks (some aggro decks can even win by turn 3). Additionally, short term disruption cards like Discard, Chalice, Teeg, and E-Canon are more likely to be casted and slow the protected version down long enough to buy aggro decks enough time to invalidate the use of AdN. While we do have IGG, it is not something that can be done with any real consistency.

The pure-speed strategy almost guarantees a win against aggro (and the protection really doesn't), and is less hindered by discard because of its redundancy. Several disruption pieces are often completely avoided because of the odds of winning so early. Short-term disruption strategies (which are eventually answered, but perhaps not before it is too late) are weaker against the pure-speed strategy; additionally disruption pieces that require bounce are actually most likely answered in a pure-speed build as it runs more card quality than another other build. The notable exception would a build that runs 4x bounce like blacklotus3636. Singletons of protection are quite powerful in the pure-speed strategy, and the deck definitely has the most to gain from the 1st protection/bounce spell as there are serious diminishing returns to any further development of protection functions until you hit a certain threshold whereby your deck plays a fundamentally different role.

Here is my basic rule of thumb: Combo belongs in an aggro-heavy meta (at least heavier than usual), and if you aren't there, then you should probably consider another archetype altogether. But, AdN is a strong card, and it can definitely win blue-matches (with and without protection in game 1). I doubt that combo is actually viable in a Legacy metagame that really prepares for it though. Combo winters are just unlikely until your combombs just overwhelm the control cards available to a format, and I definitely don't see that happening in Legacy.

I'd play combo because it is not expected, not because a metagame can't prepare for it.



peace,
4eak