Quote Originally Posted by alaska View Post
This will probably be answered in greater detail with your data, but generally speaking, did you like the tops? I've toyed with the idea of picking some up for this deck, but thought they'd be too slow/mana intensive.

Not sure I agree with cutting tendrils; call it a security blanket, but there's a relevant non-zero number of times where tendrils has gotten the job done for me where attacking could not. Thoughts on cutting both LDV for tops? Or 1 LDV and 1 Ponder maybe?
LDV is very slow too. It costs 2 and takes another turn to draw the card. Also it can cost a significant amount of life. I don't see Top and Ponder as occupying the same slots at all - LDV and Top are both later-game ways to find what you need, while Ponder finds a specific card at the low cost of U. My overall impression of Top was that it was fine. I think if I were playing another cantrip I would prefer to have Preordain, but Top has some big upsides against discard and with Mentor.

So to answer that question of is Tendrils necessary, I marked one Top and thought about if it were LDV, and considered the other as if it were Tendrils when I drew them. One game of 25 I fizzled because of not drawing a way to continue while at the same time drawing the appropriate mana and the "Tendrils top". I hardcast Emrakul something like 8 times. It's actually quite easy to do, although it takes some game time.