Quote Originally Posted by Manhattan View Post
Remember that even if you do draw it in your opener, your opener can still look like: Caverns, Badlands, Vial, Warchief, Ringleader, Weirdings, Matron. Suppose you don't draw another land within the next two drawsteps then you will not have gained any speed, 2for1'ed yourself and blanked a card in your deck to boot.
Okay. Your point is decent. But here's where your logic is flawed.

You're assuming that not only will you not draw another land, but that you will not draw another card that will benefit from having the extra speed. Given my current list, I can draw one of the following cards from my deck and benefit from the Gemstone Caverns:

Land (20 remaining)
Goblin Lackey (4 remaining, allows turn one Vial/Lackey)
Aether Vial (3 remaining, allows turn one Vial/Vial)
Warren Weirding (3 remaining, allows a turn one Weirding)
Goblin Piledriver (4 remaining, allows a turn one Piledriver)
Mogg War Marshal (4 remaining, allows a turn one War Marshal)

So in 38/53 draws, which is just shy of 72% of the time, I can gain some benefit off of the Gemstone Caverns in that instance. And that's for each draw. And that's excluding Gempalm Incinerator, because the only situation I can imagine wanting to Cycle Gempalm on turn one here instead of dropping the Vial is if my opponent led with a Lackey or a Welder.

Now, I acknowledge that in many cases with that opening hand, you're going to want to drop the Aether Vial on turn one. In which case you've at least made the thing invulnerable to Daze. In this case, 27 of the 53 draws still benefit you greatly on turn one, which is still over 50%.

Additionally, this isn't factoring in that the average CMC of my sideboard cards is 1 (Therapy, Relic, etc.), which makes Caverns even more likely to benefit from the acceleration.