I'm curious what people think about the following questions relating to deck size and composition. I'm not going to respond at any point in the thread because I'm more interested in hearing what people have to think about the issue than any other consideration.
1. Is 60 cards an absolute restriction on competitive decks or is there possibly a subset of decks that might be stronger via added flexibility vs higher predictability at 61?
2. Does an appropriately high land base for the deck, say 27 or 28 lands, make any difference in the calculation above?
3. Does a very high draw rate which produces fast card advantage as part of it's effect make any difference in the calculation above?
The questions arise from the very tough choices that people often make when they are trying to pare a deck down to 60 cards exactly or to fit an additional solution or capability into a 60 card deck that is very tightly wound already.
The last question is: does anybody know what the actual difference in predictability is between having a 60 card deck and a 61 card deck?
Personally I've been wondering this as well because I was trying to draft a starting point for wtfreshold and was having an epicly hard time making everything fit, and I'm still not happy with what it looks like. Also, it seems like some decks, like Tarmotog, for instance, don't really have enough slots for what all they want to do.
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Originally Posted by Nihil
We've actually wasted quite a lot of words exploring this issue, but I think it comes down to three points;
1) If you're dealing with a list that's still untempered, it's probably better in a lot of cases to run 61 or even, perhaps, 62 cards than to cut the wrong cards.
2) In a list that's finalized, or near enough there that the above shouldn't be an issue, there are probably obtuse mathematical reasons why it's better to run 61 cards (although 62 seems unlikely).
3) Stephen Hawking and Tony Stark are probably the only people on the planet I would believe if they said they ran 61 cards for the above reason. The level of math skills we'd be talking about is insane. It's functionally better to just run 60 cards because you didn't graduate MIT at 16.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I've seen some recent high-placing vintage lists that ran 61 and 62 cards. The problem here is that we don't have the tutoring and drawing power that vintage does, and neither do we have the well defined list of cards that every decks should run, so it's probably best to just suck it up and cut your list down to 60.
Just play Battle of Wits. Never have to worry about those spare 1 or 2 cards ever again.
But what's the right number? 240? 242? The agony!
If you can tutor and thin your deck a lot, I used to go as high as 65. But I've always had a thing for "win more" cards.
Given that some cards are better than others, you're always going to have a card that's the worst card in your deck. If you have 61 cards, and you drop the worst card, that improves the card quality of your deck overall.
220-230 should be plenty. You should be running a shit-ton of tutoring.
I once made a 1001 card decklist, although I never built it. The plan was to get lots of game wins through having opponents accidentally knock the fucker over and reveal my deck. Also, Thought Lash.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
New rule: you can play a 16 card sideboard, however you are required to shuffle up 1 in the main, giving you a 61 card library. Would you do it? Is there any advantage to having 76 cards to choose from games 2, and 3, if your draw %'s are down across the board due to a 61 card library? The answer is probably 'no'.
info.ninja
All the mathematical points are valid, but there are some decks that can't do everything they want to in a 60 card list, whereas 63-ish cards would make the deck work right. My question is "would the deck being able to squeeze in x number of cards for an important function (MD spot removal, discard, etc.) be worth the reduced predictability of the deck?"
Team Battletoadz: Fuck the Meta-police?
If it's all in our heads, it's best that we don't loose them.
It's better to just cut down a 4-of or a 3-of or to not fit in the extra cards at all. The only good reason to run more cards is if you're absolutely not sure which cards to cut.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
The maths isn't mind blowingly hard (Or I'm secretly Tony Stark), but yes 61 cards is very very slightly better.
It also varies depending on number of fetchlands/cantrips involved but it's such a small difference that most people would mess up their deck with an unneeded card 90% of the time.
Provide the list. As phrased, that's wayyy too broad a question.
Anyway, these are articles everyone interested in the subject will probably want to read:
61 Cards, Magic Russian Roulette
Innovations - Michigan States Report (Yeah, 66 Cards... What of it?)
Deep Analysis - The Real Deal on 61+
Don't forget to check out the forum threads, either (especially for the third article which has a few objective mistakes that get spotted).
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Here is a 100+ discussion on the topic.
Hand Crafting: 7
4 Brainstorm
3 Sensei's Divining Top
Threats: 12
2 Nantuko Monastery
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Stoic Angel
Disruption: 12
4 Thoughtseize
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
Creature Control: 7
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Pernicious Deed
Recursion: 3
1 Volrath's Stronghold
2 Crucible of Worlds
Lands: 19
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
2 Island
Yes, that's 60, but it wants Ponder. Everything else is basically mandatory, and cutting the 4-ofs down is a bad plan, and cutting the 3-ofs down is a bad plan, and you can't cut down the 2-ofs because then you may as well not even bother to run them, right? So what now?
Team Battletoadz: Fuck the Meta-police?
If it's all in our heads, it's best that we don't loose them.
Try a 3/3 split of Ponders and Brainstorms then whittle away the weakest cards.
Why does that list want Ponder? To make it easier to find it's best cards? Do I have to spell out the irony? Might as well bump it to 70 so you can fit in Sylvan Library and Serum Visions.
I'd cut the cute but unnecessary Crucible/Wasteland combo, for one thing, before I thought about going over 60. You're just going to have a harder and harder time setting that up over 60 anyway.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Consistancy + threshold. Fishing out the CB lock, Crucible, Deeds. Threshold is an important concern because 1/10th of the cards in the deck are dead without it. Mongoose is worthless without it and Monastery is a 'Needle'd Wasteland without it.
Wasteland was a trop. Fix'd.
TarmoTog seems like a better example of this. While there are various lists, most of them have differing issues that X number of non-core slots cover, but some lists don't have pinpoint removal, others don't have supertight manabases, etc. Not that the lists are impaired or bad, per say, but there are places that a few extra cards in the MD would seem to help.
Team Battletoadz: Fuck the Meta-police?
If it's all in our heads, it's best that we don't loose them.
So you cut 2 Monasteries and 2 Crucibles for 4 Ponders. There, cut two 2-ofs for a playset.
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