@Navsi: You might want to lump AD & colour specific removal together as "4/5 spotremoval".
As for manabase - you might want to be more specific as to the number of initial mana sources for each colour. 23 Plains make for a horrible BUG manabase.
Originally Posted by cavalrywolfpack
Mana bases are variable enough that it's hard to be specific. Most lists run ~7 fetches, ~6 duals, ~6 basics and ~3 utility lands, but those numbers change up a lot, since some lists play 4 colours, colorless splashes, Grove of the Burnwillows or Valakuts, all of which change things a lot. The '14G/14B/13X/22L' guidelines are great, but a lot of decks make exceptions - pretty much zero Scapeshift builds managed 14 black sources, for example.
The fact that they don't do it doesn't mean they shouldn't aim for it.
As a general rule, 14G/14B/>=13X/21-23L should be a fine template.
On a similar line, other card roles/types to plan out.
- Removal, Discard & Interaction
- Filtering, Tutoring & Draw
- Threats & Finishers
- Stabilization
- Ramp / Mana Acceleration
I'm thinking of going through lists on MtgTop8 for the numbers on each of these for different archetypes to get some more numbers on what slots are necessary. I'm thinking of looking particularly at other midrange-control decks like Shardless, Jund, Bant and Maverick, since they're the closest comparison points we have. We know that Miracles is going to have more filtering, more removal and less finishers than we do, after all, and comparing to combo decks is not really possible. Grixis may also be worth comparing to, although the control builds are probably more relevant than the tempo ones.
I'm grouping tutoring/filtering/draw together since the general consensus is that Painful Truths, Sensei's Divining Top and Baleful Strix all fulfil pretty similar roles in terms of increasing our deck's consistency and letting us see more cards. I guess "Consistency" should really be this header. Thoughts on whether Courser of Kruphix should count here?
Removal & Discard I'm also grouping together as cards that interact with our opponent's board state without killing them. We pretty much always play 4 Discard (Therapy) and the rest spot/board removal. A lot of other decks do a similar thing with Thoughtseizes.
Ramp is relatively unique to us, but we do see similar counterparts in other Deathrite Shaman decks. Maverick probably plays similar numbers to us (maybe a few more) and both Shardless and Jund play DRS as well. It might be interesting to see how their mana curves scale with the number of Deathrites / other ramp creatures they are playing. If playing 4 manadorks for ramp moves the average CMC from (for example) 2 to 2.4, we can use that to determine where our CMCs should be averaging out given that we're playing ~10 mana guys.
Stabilization is a category I've added in since I last posted about this stuff. We need some number of card slots which can help us to regain board control against threatening opponents. The deck has plenty of this naturally - Pernicious Deed, Thragtusk, Deathrite and Zenith - but this is still something to keep an eye on as a category we can't afford to skimp too hard on - as Arianrhod can tell you from his work on the colorless Nic Fit builds, you do have to have something available to clean up Delvers. This usually means either X-for-1 removal, lifegain/removal creatures (Thrag, Shriekmaw, Huntmaster) or multiple bodies. Punishing Fire and other recursive removal probably can be counted here too.
For finishers I'm going to run numbers considering anything that does 3 or more damage/turn a finisher, in addition to Deathrites and other sources of non-combat damage to opponents. Planeswalker that can personally end the game probably also count - so JTMS is in, but LOTV isn't.
With that, I'm going to go make some spreadsheets.
I smell the second coming of SE Fit!
I still build my deck based on the old sheet you created months ago.
- removal/interaction
- library manipulation / CA
- finishers
- ramp
In my opinion it is still very solid and I like it a lot. I try to find cards which basically fulfill at least two roles that's the reason why I think PW should be 'core' as well and why tracker is such a beast.
If u take deed for example and the new setup:
- removal (Removal & Discard I'm also grouping together as cards that interact with our opponent's board state without killing them)
- stabilization (to regain board control against threatening opponents)
deed is both and if you keep the same counting method (0.5 or 1 for each role) it is a great a card (not that we didn't know it before).
same with tracker (finisher and CA etc).
I think we should check how much 'points' are needed for each role to make the deck even more competitive and balanced.
ramp for example: I am completely fine with 10.5 (4xvex, 4xgsz, 1xdrs, 1xste, 0.5 tower)
depends on the different deck types and your cmc curve but in general I think this kind of 'analytics' are very helpful.
thanks a lot!
Awesome! Glad to see our work was helpful.
As an example, I've gone through the 9 recent Maverick lists on MTGTOP8 and got these totals:
Land: 21-23 (I'm not counting Maze of Ith, Dark Depths or Dryad Arbor as a land, but I am including Wasteland)
Ramp: 8-9 (about 50-50 split, including Zeniths)
Interaction: 18-25 (including Thalia, Teeg/Pridemage and Zenith, not including Wasteland but including Maze of Ith)
Consistency: 11-15 (Including KOTR)
Stabilization: 16-24 (higher numbers in Punishing lists - includes Scryb Ranger and Mother of Runes as they go nowhere else)
Finishers: 19-21 (including Dark Depths, equipment/Stoneforge and DRS)
Average CMC: 1.81-2.13 (including Depths/Arbor/Maze as 0-mana spells)
It's interesting to note that their finisher numbers are high compared to most Nic Fit lists - we normally run a couple Deathrites, 4 Zenith, and ~10 creatures with 3+ power. A few of our finishers are stronger haymakers (Sigarda etc) but in terms of numbers we're actually quite behind which is surprising. It's mainly because Maverick seems to almost always run 4 KOTR and 1-2 QPM, both of which beat down well, along with Stoneforges and a reasonable number of THCs.
I think we need to clearly define what we consider to be a finisher.
Don't forget we get away w/ a lot of shit b/c of Pernicious Deed, by the way. Hide behind a Siege Rhino for a bit crack Deed for 3 to wipe the board.
Oh, and Wasteland is not a land but a spell. Same goes for Gaea's Cradle (some lists run that as a 1-off).
In that case they're between 22 and 29 interaction slots, and a few lists have 10 Ramp slots.
As a finisher I was going for:
- Creatures that attack for 3+ each turn, or tutors for them
- Equipment that adds to damage, and tutors for them
- Repeatable damage/lifeloss for 2+ each turn
- Repeatable token makers
- Planeswalkers that can kill the opponent
Basically, Shardless and Teeg don't count, but Bloodbraid and DRS do count. Sound like a reasonable cutoff point?
- Repeatable, unblockable damage/lifeloss for >=2/turn
I mean, that's why DRS is so dangerous - you can have all the board presence in the world, it's not going to save you from DRS.
And how would you want to deal w/ Scavenging Ooze? I don't like to classify it as interaction, but am inclined to view it as a finisher (that, yes, occasionally fucks with your opponents plan).
But yeah, sounds like a fine cutoff!
Yeah, combat damage goes in the 'creatures that attack for 3+'. DRS would be a finisher (and stabilization, and ramp).
I was considering Scavenging Ooze as Stabilization and Finisher. It's a creature that gains life, and it can swing for more than 2 damage a turn.
Dude, you're disagreeing with yourself.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you on this one but that's why I had some trouble w/ Scavenging Ooze. Right off the bat it doesn't meet the criterium to be a finisher, but w/ a single creature card in either graveyard (which is not that farfetched) it does.
I didn't say 'creatures with 3+ base power'. I said 'creatures that attack for 3+'. I'm including Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary in my numbers for other decks, so I'm going to count Scavenging Ooze as well.
I play ooze as well and count 0.5 finisher and 0.5 interaction. It is gy hate only and 'can' get big that's why 0.5...
Sounds reasonable
I think Echelon is right it has to be considered that all finishers cmc3 can be killed by abrupt decay and deed quite easy. Killing our finishers is not that easy (sigarda, thragtusk)
Gesendet von meinem ONE E1003 mit Tapatalk
Some preliminary numbers for you guys. I'm including Wasteland as Interaction now, which is why the numbers are all high. I have been being generally generous with the numbers - I'm not using half values. Snapcaster is interaction, consistency and stabilization, as is Shardless Agent.
Maverick:
Ramp: 9.1
Interaction: 24.9
Consistency: 13.0
Stabilization: 18.9
Finisher: 20.0
Average CMC: 1.94
Jund:
Ramp: 4
Interaction: 26.8
Consistency: 8.4
Stabilization: 14.7
Finisher: 12.0
Average CMC: 1.99
BUG Midrange:
Ramp: 4
Interaction: 22.6
Consistency: 15.5
Stabilization: 14.8
Finisher: 9.1
Average CMC: 1.61
Bant Midrange:
Ramp: 7.5
Interaction: 24.4
Consistency: 14.2
Stabilization: 15.5
Finisher: 17.4
Average CMC: 1.53
Points of note:
- Average CMC was generally just under 2. I think we can probably go to 2.5 or so, but higher than that may be a problem. The highest CMC of any of these decks was a Maverick deck with 2.13.
- Less than ~20 interactive cards is probably a mistake. I can't find a single non-combo deck with fewer than that. Some of those slots are easy to fill (we have ~13 in the core) but we do want a large percentage of our flex slots to deal with the opponent's board position in some way.
- We can run relatively few finishers if we want to. We already have as many as 10 in the core, and Shardless gets by on less than that. They supplement their threats with Shardless Agent and Snapcaster beatdown, but we have Witness and Veteran Explorer for the same results. They are also better at protecting their threats with countermagic than us, however, so we probably still want some resilient choices. Bant runs ~20 threats and countermagic, so I don't think we'll end up causing problems if we end upon similar numbers, although it's probably not necessary.
Ya, the list is doing fantastic. The problem to me with 7 mashes is that I'm looking for actual randomization in my deck because I want to take advantage of the deck composition going from say 19 lands/46 cards in deck to 18 lands/45 cards in deck. It might seem like a very minor thing but with as much digging as Tops do, and all the other CA, deck thinning is actually a very real thing. Trying to get similar results to the MTGO shuffler basically.
Which brings me back to doing a couple mashes and offering my deck. The way I do it, takes 12 mashes for sufficient randomization, depending on the match I often compromise on time and only do say 6 or 7. 6 or 7 mashes still takes me about 15 seconds though. I'm pretty sure that by abandoning the mash I can get it down to 10 seconds with a better shuffle. At an average of 10 shuffles per game, that results in 150 more seconds in game 3, or 2.5 minutes.
I find the decks biggest enemy is the clock, so that seems appealing.
do u have a list how much points u distributed per card?
In my opinion it is not correct that shardless agent has full value. quite often it is still a random flip.
can u post the result for the standard rhino list as well? hard for me to compare the results and as mentioned earlier in the previous list we had 0.5 value.
my list for example ends up.
15.5 removal/interaction
15.5 library manipulation/CA
14.5 finishers
10.5 ramp
21 lands
seems very, very low compared to yours.
if we do it like this we should agree on the basics first..
I would count Courser, it's extra cards and it has an absurd interaction with SDT.
Maverick also plays 4 Wastelands. The combination of Wasteland + DRS means they accelerate to 3 and stay around 3 during the game. Our curve is higher than theirs in most builds (I think mine is about equal). On the other hand I find that we plateau around 5. Games can and do go past 5, but 5 is where our mana development slows down.Ramp is relatively unique to us, but we do see similar counterparts in other Deathrite Shaman decks. Maverick probably plays similar numbers to us (maybe a few more) and both Shardless and Jund play DRS as well. It might be interesting to see how their mana curves scale with the number of Deathrites / other ramp creatures they are playing. If playing 4 manadorks for ramp moves the average CMC from (for example) 2 to 2.4, we can use that to determine where our CMCs should be averaging out given that we're playing ~10 mana guys.
If you're really interested in mana development, in the past year I've made two programs capable of playing two different decks, Modern Knightfall and Legacy Burn. Although I delete most data, I do still have quite a bit if you want to look and see how various land counts impact the size of your cards. Without getting all that deep into the numbers, I think you would be absolutely shocked at the land counts that prove most consistent. Essentially, the results were that just about everyone underplays their lands. It's the #1 reason I'm such a big proponent of Dryad Arbor, simply having the ability to get another 4 T1 mana sources when you need them off of GSZ is a huge boost to consistency. Anyways, I have a bunch of graphs and such that correlate win turns and lands played, along with deck curves to those lands played.
I've talked with Echelon about this subject a bit too. But to give you an idea, in order to consistently hit 3 drops on turn 3 all of my testing has shown that you ideally want 26 lands. Though that's without mana acceleration... it would only take a few minutes to set up the test, perhaps I'll add a Birds of Paradise or something (to mimic DRS... it's just easier to not deal with the exile a land issue) and see how the numbers change. The other thing I found is that the most powerful cards in the game are cards that are both mana sinks and mana sources. Deathrite Shaman is the most obvious, but Mutavault is another, other creature lands, and... surprise surprise, Ash Barrens also fits that category, which is another reason I like it. You can expand that definition further to include cards like SDT which find us lands, and are an optional way to spend mana.
Meren and Scavenging Ooze are both good for stabilization. I would argue Ranger of Eos is good too because he tutors 2x DRS, but maybe it's better to just list DRS in that case, which you're already doing.Stabilization is a category I've added in since I last posted about this stuff. We need some number of card slots which can help us to regain board control against threatening opponents. The deck has plenty of this naturally - Pernicious Deed, Thragtusk, Deathrite and Zenith - but this is still something to keep an eye on as a category we can't afford to skimp too hard on - as Arianrhod can tell you from his work on the colorless Nic Fit builds, you do have to have something available to clean up Delvers. This usually means either X-for-1 removal, lifegain/removal creatures (Thrag, Shriekmaw, Huntmaster) or multiple bodies. Punishing Fire and other recursive removal probably can be counted here too.
Edit: I suspect this is the road we'll ultimately go down so I'm going to list my deck using your criteria, I'm only counting MB. I'll list the cards I count as each incase there's any disagreement.
SE Fit:
Ramp: 11 (4x GSZ, 4x Vet, 2x DRS, 1x Phyrexian Tower)
Interaction: 23 (2x DRS, 1x Eternal Witness, 1x Meren of Clan Nel-Toth, 1x Qasali Pridemage, 1x Ranger of Eos, 1x Scavenging Ooze, 1x Sylvan Safekeeper, 1x Cavern of Souls, 1x Volrath's Stronghold, 4x Cabal Therapy, 4x GSZ, 2x Abrupt Decay, 3x Path to Exile, 1x Pernicious Deed)
Consistency: 17 (1x Courser of Kruphix, 2x Dark Confidant, 1x Eternal Witness, 1x Ranger of Eos, 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth, 2x Tireless Tracker, 4x SDT, 4x GSZ, 1x Volrath's)
Stabilization: 11 (1x Courser of Kruphix, 2x DRS, 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth, 1x Ranger of Eos, 1x Scavenging Ooze, 1x Volrath's Stronghold, 4x GSZ)
Finisher: 16 (2x DRS, 1x Endless One, 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth, 2x Monastery Mentor, 1x Qasali Pridemage, 1x Ranger of Eos, 1x Scavenging Ooze, 1x Sigarda, Host of Herons, 2x Tireless Tracker, 4x GSZ)
Average CMC: 68 mana pips total, either 1.11 if you include lands or 1.74 if you only include stuff you cast.
As an example, this deck (Bant Stoneblade):
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=13862&d=281914&f=LE
Ramp: 7 (3 DRS 4 Heirarch)
Interaction: 26 (4 Wasteland, 4 Stoneforge, 2 Clique, 4 Daze, 4 FOW, 4 Swords, 2 Jace, 1 SOFAI, 1 Jitte)
Consistency: 13 (4 Stoneforge, 4 Brainstorm, 1 Ponder, 2 Jace, 1 SOFAI, 1 Library)
Stabilization: 15 (3 Deathrite, 4 Stoneforge, 4 True-Name, 1 Batterskull, 2 Jace, 1 Jitte)
Finisher: 18 (3 Deathrite, 4 Stoneforge, 4 True-Name, 2 Clique, 1 Batterskull, 2 Jace, 1 SOFAI, 1 Jitte)
And a Nic Fit list:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12825&d=274449&f=LE
Ramp: 9 (2 DRS 3 Veteran Explorer 4 GSZ)
Interaction: 20 (1 Teeg, 1 Witness, 2 Decay, 4 GSZ, 4 Therapy, 3 Swords, 1 vindicate, 1 Garruk, 3 Deed)
Consistency: 12 (1 Witness, 1 Nissa, 2 Tracker, 4 GSZ, 2 Top, 1 Truths, 1 Library)
Stabilization: 17 (1 Baneslayer, 1 Dromoka, 2 DRS, 1 Witness, 1 Ooze, 1 Rhino, 1 Thragtusk, 4 Zenith, 3 Deed, 1 Garruk, 1 Sorin)
Finisher: 17 (1 Baneslayer, 1 Dromoka, 2 DRS, 1 Nissa, 1 Ooze, 1 rhino, 1 Thragtusk, 2 Tracker, 4 Zenith, 1 Garruk, 1 Sorin, 1 Sigarda)
With respect to Shardless, it's definitely a consistency card (since it always provides CA), and it can generally be expected to stabilize the board, since you generally get another body, a removal spell, or a spell that finds you another body. It could be argued as not being consistent enough to qualify as interaction - might instead be 1/0.5/0.5/0.5 consistency / stabilize / interact/ finisher.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
