[Deck] Spanish Inquisition (B/x Storm Combo)

[andy]

Sorry for leaving a massive post and then not responding for a while. As part of my getting back into Magic, I've been playing a different deck at my local store each week to try out a variety of things. I haven't had much time to keep goldfishing PSI. I do want to respond to a few things:

1)

I haven't tried to figure out what my turn one rate can be, but I feel that belcher heavy lists make that worse.

Belcher did show up in a bunch of hands I mulliganed, although I feel that if those were Tendrils I still would have mulliganed. Still, I'll try out a higher ratio of Tendrils to Belcher for my next 30 hands.

2)

One thing to note is that even though you can get lucky and get T1 kills all the time, it often requires just that - luck. Turn one D4 with no mana floating is something I do all the time. You aren't necessarily trying to T1 when you do that (that doesn't mean you don't continue if it seems terribly obvious, just be careful) but you will generally get an easy T2 out of that T1 play.

"Luck" in this sense is a product of deck design. I'm not trying to figure out the best way to get T2 kills, and I'm not trying to work out the best strategy for playing the deck in, say, a tournament situation. The claim was that the deck can reach a 60%+ T1 win rate in goldfishing, and I'm testing that claim. To that end, any time I D4 into something where I would normally pass the turn in a real game, clearly passing the turn is incorrect. (Any decision to stop going off when you could keep going necessarily lowers your T1 win rate, even if it would be the correct decision in a real game.)

3)

T1 on the draw on the other hand... I could see that being some higher number like the 60% + claims. It just seems really easy to do T1 on the draw really often.

That's a point I hadn't really considered. All of my hands were assuming I'd be on the play. Perhaps my next batch of hands should be a play/draw split, keeping stats for each separately and together.

4)

Just know that if you are playing on a program like Cockatrice or Workstation, the shuffler is really important to getting good hands. I like to pile shuffle every single time I draw a hand, even upon mulligans. I get plenty of turn 1's.

I shuffle very thoroughly. I side shuffle several times, then pile shuffle, then side shuffle several more times. All of the sample hands I posted were real life, not using a program's auto-shuffler.

5)

Also, its not really clear but the turn 1 ratio of 60% can vary drastically.

This doesn't make sense. If you mean the deck can be very streaky in the short term, then fine. But it has some T1 win rate (assuming consistent play decisions), and over a large collection of goldfishes, the law of large numbers says we should approach that T1 win rate. The fact that I had under 30% T1 win rate over 30 hands doesn't mean that the T1 win rate is actually under 30% (because a sample size of 30 isn't particularly large). But, assuming I didn't make obvious errors in choice of deck list or play decisions, a sample size of 30 with such a low T1 win rate should be enough to reject the 60%+ hypothesis. (I haven't done any stats in a while, but something, something, something, confidence interval, T-test? Perhaps somebody more comfortable with statistics could comment on the sample size issue.)

6)

You simply must learn to play the deck optimally by waiting and not pushing the turn 1.

I'm not trying to play the deck optimally for, say, tournament purposes. I'm looking to optimize the T1 win rate.

7) For my next set of sample hands (whenever I get around to them), I think I'll make the following changes from my previous list:

- 3 Goblin Charbelcher
+ 1 Tendrils of Agony
+ 2 Manamorphose

Should I also cut, say, Past in Flames for the fourth Tendrils of Agony? I think five win conditions instead of four is probably the right decision, and I can't tell how good Past in Flames is in this deck. It sometimes seems like a win-more card. At the very least, I don't think it really helps the T1 win rate, since it requires a bit of setup and multiple rituals, and it usually can't make good use of Culling the Weak or Lion's Eye Diamond.