MTG Salvation

Because of the recent thread on Brainstorm and the cantrip cartel, my friend and i were discussing deck consistency vs. deck space. It is never fun to cut a flashy spell for a basic land, or a piece of spot removal, or a Preordain, but if you are trying to optimize then it is usually best to bite the bullet and "eat your vegetables."

Striving for consistency is great, but how much is too much? When you Merchant Scroll for Mystical Teachings for Terminate, you are spending 8 freaking mana to kill a creature. You can't derp around all day and not have any business or you will get tempo'd out, or worse, run out of utility spells in your deck. Also, and I don't think we are at this point yet, but what do you do if there are too many good library manipulation spells printed and you can't play them all?

So here is the poll: If you could play as many Demonic Tutors as you wanted in your EDH deck, how many would be correct? Why?

51-60 because with those chances I will always win by turn 4 or 5.

Quote from xbinox

51-60 because with those chances I will always win by turn 4 or 5.

And so would everyone else. That doesn't sound like a sustainable meta game though.

I think that if I were realistically looking at what would make my deck the best and still keep the game playable, 9.

I'm trying to imagine what the meta would be like if this was the case, and I can't see anything but combo. Spell Snare would be sweet, but they would run more Tutors than a control player could counter, and probably answers to any non-counter solutions.

I think the idea behind the question is interesting, but something slower like Diabolic Tutor might be more open to debate.

The meta overall would develop into turn 1 Mindlock Orb/Aven Mindcensor etc. vs. 51 Demonic Tutor.dec. That would truly be a horrible scenario.

Quote from jakalova

The meta overall would develop into turn 1 Mindlock Orb/Aven Mindcensor etc. vs. 51 Demonic Tutor.dec. That would truly be a horrible scenario.

Right... so like the OP asked: What is the right number?

Probably just a playset. Maybe an extra fifth. I'm not taking up too many slots, so I can still include a lot of threats and solutions. And in an average game, having 4 or 5 means I'll get one or two, which *should* be enough frequency to tip the scales in any given situation.

Quote from Galspanic

Right... so like the OP asked: What is the right number?

One or zero.

Quote from jakalova

One or zero.

You're literally not even trying.

I'd get another demonic tutor with my demonic tutor, just for the hell of it.

zero because i'm a cool guy

depends what you want.

fast combo? probably 50+.

aggro? probably more like 10.

voltron? I'd vote 20+, they curve nicely into t2 tutor for sword, t3 sword, t4 general, t5 equip swing.

control? depends, but probably in the 20s.

Seriously? In any real deck that doesn't need to find all the combo pieces, every, single, turn around 5-10 is more than enough. Control and lock usually contains blue, which may benefit more from straight up card draw, and tutor constantly will slow the game down too much. You want the best answers, and depending on the situation having too many ways to find the answer will just lower your chances to draw into said answers or start taking over the spots for them. Maybe.

Aggro is similar amount, but with the whole different reason. It's sometimes quantity over quality. A fast aggro deck wants the threats hit hard and fast. With no signs of stopping. Spending 2 mana to find a 3 drop seems rather counter-intuitive, cause you could have just found another 3 drop to slot it in. 5 mana in some aggro decks is a lot, if you ARE going for the RAWR IM A SHARK MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH oops out of fish now I'm dead kind of deck. Yes, I just made that type up.

Voltron decks might want more, don't know, don't care.
Combo decks are boring, repetitive to the bone, and bleh. But about like 10-13 should be enough.

Something people did not notice. A good EDH deck is like high 30s-low 40 lands which means about 50-60 nonland cards in a deck. Anything more than 25% tutors sounds silly. What, have 14 tutors in a 40 land deck, so you'll never NOT see a tutor in your opening?

Quote from xlich

Seriously? In any real deck that doesn't need to find all the combo pieces, every, single, turn around 5-10 is more than enough. Control and lock usually contains blue, which may benefit more from straight up card draw, and tutor constantly will slow the game down too much. You want the best answers, and depending on the situation having too many ways to find the answer will just lower your chances to draw into said answers or start taking over the spots for them. Maybe.

Aggro is similar amount, but with the whole different reason. It's sometimes quantity over quality. A fast aggro deck wants the threats hit hard and fast. With no signs of stopping. Spending 2 mana to find a 3 drop seems rather counter-intuitive, cause you could have just found another 3 drop to slot it in. 5 mana in some aggro decks is a lot, if you ARE going for the RAWR IM A SHARK MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH oops out of fish now I'm dead kind of deck. Yes, I just made that type up.

Voltron decks might want more, don't know, don't care.
Combo decks are boring, repetitive to the bone, and bleh. But about like 10-13 should be enough.

Something people did not notice. A good EDH deck is like high 30s-low 40 lands which means about 50-60 nonland cards in a deck. Anything more than 25% tutors sounds silly. What, have 14 tutors in a 40 land deck, so you'll never NOT see a tutor in your opening?

Meh, I've got a deck with tutors around 30-35%. If you're looking for specific engines, reliably having multiple tutors in a game is sort of a must.

9-10 gives you ~50% chance at having one in your opening 7; 18 gives you ~90% chance at having one in your first 11 cards (eg, ship 3 cards twice for partial paris mulligan down to a 5-card starting hand). These are good points of reference for the general case of "how many do I need in order to see them each game?"

Combo decks probably want to see two, in order to grab all the pieces of their combo (either a 2-card combo, or a 3-card combo including the general). In that case, 22-23 gives you ~50% at two in your opening 7, and 30 gives you ~90% at two in your first 11 cards.

Wow, I thought for sure that more people would vote for somewhere between 11 and 30 cards seeing as Demonic Tutor could be mana ramp, card draw, removal, or a threat. But to be honest, I have no idea how to quantify the answer beyond what "feels" right.

Yes, this format (and this game) would suck if Relentless Demonic Tutor actually existed. This is just a thought experiment to get people thinking about how much deck space they actually want to devote to library manipulation.

Quote from DirkGently »

depends what you want.

fast combo? probably 50+.

aggro? probably more like 10.

voltron? I'd vote 20+, they curve nicely into t2 tutor for sword, t3 sword, t4 general, t5 equip swing.

control? depends, but probably in the 20s.

This makes sense. I can understand why a fast aggro deck would not want too many of them.

Quote from donfuan »

why. don't. you. play. standard.

Wait, I get to play 20 copies of Demonic Tutor in Standard?!

Quote from donfuan

why. don't. you. play. standard.

Because. Standard. Doesn't. Even. Have. Legit. Tutors. Silly. Also. This. Is. A. Thought. Experiment.

OT: Some decks operate extremely proactively, so they wouldn't need that many tutors to function well. That being said, combo deck would benefit way too much from your proposed situation, thus probably rendering other archetypes useless. I'd say they would probably play around 40-50 tutors. Perhaps a little less.

Hell, I run ten tutors or so in my normal deck. Obviously, Demonic Tutor would at least replace all of those (maybe Vampiric Tutor can stay) so that's kind of a bare minimum of awesomeness. And the only reason I don't run more is because at that point I've exhausted all the reasonable tutors: Diabolic Tutor is already of questionable worth at the top of my tutor curve, then you hit the flat-out too bad or expensive ones like Diabolic Revelation or Rune-Scarred Demon. I have to imagine I'd run at least 20 or so but I'm not going to bother putting more thought into it.

Max is probably somewhere in the high 30's, low 40's. You'll need a bare minimum of 35 land to avoid frequently mulling yourself down to <6. You need not just a combo to win with, you need protection for it and/or redundancy as a Plan B. Plus, with that many tutors you might want some fast mana so you don't simply get tempoed out while you're using 1B every turn tutoring stuff. ;[

Depends on the deck.im doomsday I would cut all the bad tutors and transmutes and run about 15 this would make my deck kill turn 1-3 every game.

This is completely up to the individual, there is no one right answer. If you want to win, obviously 60 or so is going to be around the right number. I personally run one in two of my decks and I am relatively happy with that number. Tutors shouldn't be like relentless rats, otherwise I'd guess that particular tutor would get banned for game balancing issues, heh.

Quote from Scott

This is completely up to the individual, there is no one right answer. If you want to win, obviously 60 or so is going to be around the right number. I personally run one in two of my decks and I am relatively happy with that number. Tutors shouldn't be like relentless rats, otherwise I'd guess that particular tutor would get banned for game balancing issues, heh.

No 60 is way to many you won't have enough broken free mana cards to power your combo as fast as if you played more dark ritual sol ring type cards most Combi decks only need 1 maybe 2 tutors to win. Now ask me his mang Mox Jet's would I run you might get 30+

I'd go for 11-20, depending if deck is goodstuff or combo

Quote from moxnix

No 60 is way to many you won't have enough broken free mana cards to power your combo as fast as if you played more dark ritual sol ring type cards most Combi decks only need 1 maybe 2 tutors to win. Now ask me his mang Mox Jet's would I run you might get 30+

Depends on how many cards your combo consists of. Maybe a little less than sixty then, how about 50?

Quote from Scott

Depends on how many cards your combo consists of. Maybe a little less than sixty then, how about 50?

You your deck is literally gonna contain 60 ways to find maybe 2 cards. Or maybe at that point it'll be the biggest bluff and you've just been tutoring for the tutors.