I think you may be right on the Raven's Crime and Lilianas. I did a search for jump-start cards that might help, but they didn't really stand out as synergistic enough. I also think you're right on the Urborg, as they'll allow us to use the fetches for mana and save them for shuffling later. I changed my list a bit to include a full playset of Wrench Mind, and dropped Frenzy down to three. I also cut a Collective Brutality.
Going to try to get some more testing in, but I'm no longer on vacation and have to go to work
hi! had the time last night to try xmage and did some playtesting for experimental frenzy.
*note: decklist is budget (without lotv). this is based in my real life situation that i can't afford it.
initial thoughts are:
-smallpox is not good with frenzy as we need to have 4-lands to cast frenzy.
-bontu, not good with frenzy already in the field.
thoughts after playtest:
*i think we want 1~2cmc spells in order to cast multiple spells in a turn once frenzy is out in the field.
*frenzy might work with a budget list (w/o lotv).
*had difficulty deciding whether to retrace raven's crime or play the land to get a high chance to cast frenzy at turn4.
*racing is much easier with frenzy. able to cast multiple spells after hellbent is really what im wishing for in 8rack.
in 8rack, it's common to be in a hellbent situation wherein we are racing our opponent and we are relying with lady-luck for a good topdeck either we lack few rack effects in the field or looking for a discard spell / land (retrace) in order to manage our opponent to stay within rack range. from my very limited experience playing the deck i feel experimental frenzy is the card i'm looking for to make the situation to be more favorable on our side.
I put together a deck with EF, I was playing 3 rabblemasters and 2 Pack Rat instead of LOTV since I sold mine off long ago. I wasnt playing the full number of racks and SA, It may be correct to play spirit guide to get EF out earlier, the card will litterally draw you 3 cards a turn on average when it hits its bonkers and defiantly worth building around to make it all work. It is probably the single card I want to top deck into, and honestly if you draw more then one just pitch it to the RAT or brutality
Hey everyone. So, as I mentioned before, Experimental Frenzy seems to test very well, but the deck still had the same problems that I remember when I didn't resolve a Frenzy, in that sometimes the deck will just lose to itself as the opponents' topdecks will sometimes just help them turn the corner. I decided to put in some work to delve a little deeper into how we can tweak the deck.
The usual method that I prefer is to use a data-based approach. I've done this with a few decks in the past now (Lantern, Blue Tron, Taxes, and Skred) to very good results. I started doing the same with this deck, and so far I've entered 75 games of data into a spreadsheet.
My method is based on the idea that Modern is approximately a turn-four format. This isn't to say that the games are over on turn four, but that they are often decided by turn four. If one deck cannot maintain sufficient control over the course of the first four turns, then the opponent will be allowed to do so, and that will often lead to an overwhelming advantage. Thus, each player will see somewhere around 10 to 12 cards, depending on mulligans, to attempt to gain control over the direction of the game in those first four turns. This means that the opening hand, usually around seven or six cards, will account for approximately 60% to 70% of the resources that will be available to accomplish this task.
The spreadsheets that I use to take a look at how each card performs specifically compares win rates when there are specific numbers of each card in the deck in the opening hand. It then compares the win rates, and accounts for sample size by weighing these changes in win rates. The spreadsheet also accounts for diminishing returns on cards, so in some cases it's good to have a card in the opener, but having multiples might decrease correlating win percentages. I've also had it look at other data points with other decks, and have started to do the same with 8rack.
Anyways, here is my work so far. The data set is still not nearly as large as I'd like, but it's getting there. With the data set available so far, there are some interesting things to note:
Smallpox is, by far, the top performing card in the deck, followed by Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, and Liliana of the Veil, in that order. Mutavault is the next significant performer. These are all accounting for diminishing returns. The Mutavault data set is going to require some more, though, as it's somewhat skewed by the oddity of having a decreased win correlation when there is one in hand, but increased with multiples.
Ensnaring Bridge and Collective Brutality are the top performers for cards that currently have no diminishing returns data (no games with multiples in hand yet).
The Rack seriously underperforms, particularly compared to Shrieking Affliction. This seems to imply that Affliction is just more reliable as a win condition than The Rack, even though The Rack can deal damage sooner.
As I mentioned, I do think that we're going to need some more data if we really want to get closer to truthful and accurate numbers. I'm going to continue working on that, skimming videos on Youtube for the data. If anyone has any suggestions for additional data points to look at (combinations of certain cards and correlating win percentages with those combinations, etc.), feel free to let me know and I'll get it included. I'm hoping this could help get the deck performing better than it has been.
Welp, got some more work done, more games entered, and built a preliminary list off of the data so far. Played a quick match online and it felt very smooth. I wish I could find room for that Experimental Frenzy, but figure that for now I'll focus on just tuning a stock list and then branching out from there maybe.
Anyways, here are the videos (super-quick rundown of the build and the match I played). I'll try to get a few more in as well, but kind of spreading myself thin between work, family, Skred, and this.
Smallpox numbers have plummeted. Is now the poorest scoring nonland card in the deck.
Raven's Crimes numbers are back up. Still not great in multiples, but good numbers despite that.
The Rack and Shrieking Affliction are pretty close together, both performing not so great.
Funeral Charm performing pretty well.
With the above information, I reworked the deck as follows:
I've dropped the Rack and Affliction numbers to five, with a 3/2 split of Affliction/Rack. I went with 3 Affliction over 3 Rack due to the nature of there being more sideboard cards against The Rack.
I've dropped Smallpox altogether. When it's good, it's pretty good, but more often than not it seems to be just as bad for us as it is the for the opponent.
In place of Smallpox, I've added Lingering Souls. That makes three copies of Souls and three copies of Bitterblossom. What this does for us is diversify our threats. Before now, opponents could simply lay a threat and try to race our Rack effects, holding cards (usually lands, if possible) to win that race. This meant that we had to not only answer their threat, but continue being able to discard the cards they're holding. This was often tough, if not impossible, to do. With the token generators, however, we put the opponent into a sort of zugzwang. If they don't answer our tokens, they will clock them. If they do expend resources (cards) to answer our tokens, then our Rack effects will clock them. Our discard works with either plan, as our discard can enable Rack damage, or protect our tokens and make sure the opponent can't stabilize. Ensnaring Bridge works just fine with our flying tokens, while impeding the opponent from having the opportunity to topdeck a bigger threat.
We now have a decent "removal" suite, in Fatal Push, Funeral Charm, Collective Brutality, and Ensnaring Bridge, bringing our "removal" numbers to 11 cards. Funeral Charm and Brutality serve double-duty with discard, bringing our discard to 20 (not including lands when we have a Raven's Crime in the graveyard). 10 of those discard spells we have are able to hit lands as well, helping to shore up that weakness (again, not including lands when we have a Raven's Crime in the graveyard). Three of them being instant-speed helps to ensure the opponent can't topdeck a sorcery-speed effect to stabilize when they're hellbent.
All of this combined pressure allows Liliana, who is often safe behind chump blockers or a Bridge, to continuously tick up until we force our opponents to make very difficult sacrifices.
The Wrench Minds were delegated to the sideboard, to be brought in depending on if we're on the play/draw against decks running few (if any) artifacts. I'm running three Delirium Skeins in the side as well, avoiding our Rack plan to be shut off by Leyline of Sanctity. This means that the opponent can still put the Leyline into play and be down that card, but will have little or no effect on us. Waste Not works with this plan, allowing us to refill our hand and/or make more threats that can often swing under Bridge or chump block until our Liliana ultimates. Leyline of the Void seems to have performed very well for the deck, so I stuck with that for graveyard hate. The fourth Collective Brutality is for small-creature matchups and Burn.
I'll continue to keep testing this list, feels really good right now. Unfortunately, it is very expensive. I plan on building it in paper, but that's going to take a little while.
Anyways, I look forward to the feedback, and I hope that this helpful!
When I rated cards, I defined top 3 as Liliana, Inquisition and Ravens Crime
Mutavault wasnt in the contest but Id say I will put it top5 and Smallpox top4
Smallpox is cool because you can 'use' a blank card as discard, helps big time with consistency
And consistency is very important in 8 Rack
IpPlay 3 Funeral Charms for years and still happy
Versatility gives consistency and consistency is a king
I wont go to 5 racks, maybe 7 at max. We need to win games once we neutralized their threats. With 5 racks we will die to opp topdecks too often (discard is weak to topdecks))
I went down in Rack effects, but up in win conditions overall (15 now), and diversified my wincons to work with Bridge (another well performing card). When Smallpox is good, it's pretty good, but it requires certain conditions to be met for that to happen. I think I'd prefer Bridge over Smallpox, as it permanently answers an opponent's topdecked threats rather than needing to draw the right removal at the right time. To be fair, though, my perception on this is only based on hindsight after seeing the numbers coming out the way they do, with Bridge far outperforming Smallpox, even when weighed for sample size. I could see an argument for both, but every other nonland card also beats Smallpox.
I wrote above about diversifying threats, using the six token generators, to force an opponent into a sort of zugzwang. If they expend cards from hand to answer the tokens, then they will lose to Rack effects. If they don't, they will lose to tokens. All of that being a dilemma for them while simultaneously having their hand disrupted. It seems that if we go all-in on the Rack plan, we become a slower glass-cannon sort of deck, where it is easier to combat us with strategies like sandbagging lands, racing us with harder-hitting threats (forcing us to have to draw and expend resources answering the threats), or with cards like Leyline. This new direction allows us to play a true control game. With classic lists, we have to draw the right combination of cards, in the right order, at the right time, for the deck to function. Too many Rack effects and not enough discard or removal means we just fall behind. Too much discard and removal and not enough Rack effects means we lose to topdecked with no clock for the opp. With the new game plan, we've solved this problem.
I did, and continued compiling data from it. Unfortunately, the data shows a few things that don't look promising. It seems that the cards that correlate the best with increased win percentages are the same cards that are the core of other successful decks: Liliana of the Veil, Inquisition of Kozilek, Ensnaring Bridge...and the cards that correlate with decreased win percentages are the cards that make the deck 8rack: The Rack, Shrieking Affliction, Smallpox...
This seems to imply that 8rack really just isn't a very good deck. I figured that no one would really care to hear that 8rack simply is not a very good deck, as shown via the data, so thought it best that I didn't post a follow up at all if all I was going to do was tell people something that they might not want to hear. Maybe a card will be printed in the future that could help the deck, but out of all of the decks that I've used the data approach on, this one stands out to me as the one where the data seems clear on the nature of the deck itself.
I apologize to those of you have seen this a couple times now... just want to make sure everyone can see it.
Basically, it seems like Urborg is less relevant than many people thought. I calculated how often we hit BB on turn 2 on the draw and Urborg only affects our 80 odd percent chance by 1-2% (in other words, we only get 1 Urborg / 0 Swamp / 1+ Colorless land hands ~2% of them time). This means we may want to cut the fourth Urborg to save ourselves a real chance of getting legend ruled (with 4 urborg 10% of opening hands have 2 or more Urborg. with 3 Urborg that number drops to about 5%).
Here are the tables, though they are formatted better on reddit:
I don't want to suggest anything too specific, I'll let you make your own judgments based on the numbers, but I'm interested in trying out 3 urborg and pushing the 5th colorless land (maybe a ghostquarter). Let me know what you think.
Great post
too bad math is not easy to confirm
but I have my own conclusions
if you look at transition from 4 urborg, 4 muta (thats shorter)) to 3 urborg 5 muta in 23 land setup
you fall from 86.8 to 84.2. Difference is 2.6. So in first case you have 13.2% to have less than 2 black sources by t2. And 15.8% in second case. So the probability of doing 'bad' is increased by 2.6/13.2, thats 20% increase, not small in my opinion. And we dont want to mulligan in 8Rack.
I played with 4 Urborgs forever and I didnt want to cut one. Smallpox, Liliana and Ravens Crime are 20% of the deck, chances you get one are very high. Fatal Push and fetches also benefit from urborgs.
It should be mentioned that probability of hitting enough lands is "continuous": you lose or gain small percentages that are very hard to distingiush in real game. You just settle for some percentage of fail. You can lower it by sacrificing something else but there is no concrete answer if its better or worse. Even with 30 black sources we arent guaranteed to hit a single black source on t1! And I remember people claiming it is better to play 8 colorless lands with 24 lands...
Just to be clear, I was already playing 5 colorless lands. So I'm transitioning from 4 Urborg / 5 Colorless to 3 Urborg / +1 Swamp / 5 Colorless. So that's 87.1 -> 86.6. Which is such a small difference compared to 10.3% of hands with double Urborg vs 5.6%. I'm not claiming that every double Urborg hand is bad, but if some of my double Urborg hands were 1 Urborg / 1 Swamp hands I think more of those hands are keepable and not mulligans. For example I think 2 Urborg / 5 spell hands should be mulliganed in most circumstances.
We certainly have ways to mitigate double urborg hands. Like you said 20% of our deck is built to leverage it, but I think 1 Urborg / 1 Swamp is always better than 2 Urborg. Or at least better 95+% of the time.
Also, I'm not trying to say that 3 Urborg is clearly superior. I think the numbers point to 3 Urborg potentially being better and the only way to confirm this is to test 3 Urborg decks. So hopefully someone out there tests this and comes back with results. Like you said, calculations don't necessarily translate to win percentage in real life.
Hello fellow rackers
As the primer says, 8rack is an highly customizable shell. So I went ahead and wanted to build a creature heavier version... This is the list I play-tested in a recent FNM:
There were 20 opponents in the FNM and I ended up losing in the semi-finals.
The star was Smuggler's Copter to get more value out of "enter the battlefield" rats such as Burglar Rat or Rotting Rats.
The only addition in the list above from the deck I used at the FNM is Chittering Rats. I found that depite all the discard rats, some opponents kept lands in hand to wreck the main plan. I thought that Chittering Rats could be a way out (unless they fetch), while comboing with the other rats and copter. Although Wrench Mind could also work...
I lost in semi-finals against Burn, which was just too good at top-decking... Do you think I should consider Funeral Charm as an instant speed discard? It also gives swampwalk to the pumped up Pack Rat. Alternatively, Aether Vial could instant cast rats in this setup to discard in the draw phase or crew copters. Another play I see with the vial is cycling with copter and vialing a rat in before the damage phase to pump a pack rat... Or vial a Pack Rat in and double it for just 3 mana
I'm open to any suggestion. This is not meant to be a budget deck, just a creature/tribal rat twist on 8Rack.
20 creatures doesn't work with vial. You need a lot of more rats of you want use aether vial. Look at humans, merfolk or spirit decks and how much creatures they use
20 creatures doesn't work with vial. You need a lot of more rats of you want use aether vial. Look at humans, merfolk or spirit decks and how much creatures they use
It could also be a combination of Aether Vial and Cloudstone Curio for soft locking the opponent. But either cases (curio or more rats) is tight, unless I drop down to 8rack instead of the 12 racks I have now... I'm not sure which is best to support the 8rack plan, as the deck is still meant to be 8rack
It doesn't work. Aether vial and cloudstone means you have less then 20 creatures, and 20 is to less anyway. Think about it, you need vial and cloudstone and creature... To many variables and this is the reason it doesn't work. You can't say it's enough if it works only each second game. You need it 80%.
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Going to try to get some more testing in, but I'm no longer on vacation and have to go to work
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
*note: decklist is budget (without lotv). this is based in my real life situation that i can't afford it.
initial thoughts are:
-smallpox is not good with frenzy as we need to have 4-lands to cast frenzy.
-bontu, not good with frenzy already in the field.
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
2 Blood Crypt
12 Swamp
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Wrench Mind
4 Raven's Crime
4 Thoughtseize
4 Funeral Charm
2 Fatal Push
2 Dismember
2 Collective Brutality
4 The Rack
4 Shrieking Affliction
3 Experimental Frenzy
thoughts after playtest:
*i think we want 1~2cmc spells in order to cast multiple spells in a turn once frenzy is out in the field.
*frenzy might work with a budget list (w/o lotv).
*had difficulty deciding whether to retrace raven's crime or play the land to get a high chance to cast frenzy at turn4.
*racing is much easier with frenzy. able to cast multiple spells after hellbent is really what im wishing for in 8rack.
in 8rack, it's common to be in a hellbent situation wherein we are racing our opponent and we are relying with lady-luck for a good topdeck either we lack few rack effects in the field or looking for a discard spell / land (retrace) in order to manage our opponent to stay within rack range. from my very limited experience playing the deck i feel experimental frenzy is the card i'm looking for to make the situation to be more favorable on our side.
The usual method that I prefer is to use a data-based approach. I've done this with a few decks in the past now (Lantern, Blue Tron, Taxes, and Skred) to very good results. I started doing the same with this deck, and so far I've entered 75 games of data into a spreadsheet.
My method is based on the idea that Modern is approximately a turn-four format. This isn't to say that the games are over on turn four, but that they are often decided by turn four. If one deck cannot maintain sufficient control over the course of the first four turns, then the opponent will be allowed to do so, and that will often lead to an overwhelming advantage. Thus, each player will see somewhere around 10 to 12 cards, depending on mulligans, to attempt to gain control over the direction of the game in those first four turns. This means that the opening hand, usually around seven or six cards, will account for approximately 60% to 70% of the resources that will be available to accomplish this task.
The spreadsheets that I use to take a look at how each card performs specifically compares win rates when there are specific numbers of each card in the deck in the opening hand. It then compares the win rates, and accounts for sample size by weighing these changes in win rates. The spreadsheet also accounts for diminishing returns on cards, so in some cases it's good to have a card in the opener, but having multiples might decrease correlating win percentages. I've also had it look at other data points with other decks, and have started to do the same with 8rack.
Anyways, here is my work so far. The data set is still not nearly as large as I'd like, but it's getting there. With the data set available so far, there are some interesting things to note:
Smallpox is, by far, the top performing card in the deck, followed by Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, and Liliana of the Veil, in that order. Mutavault is the next significant performer. These are all accounting for diminishing returns. The Mutavault data set is going to require some more, though, as it's somewhat skewed by the oddity of having a decreased win correlation when there is one in hand, but increased with multiples.
Ensnaring Bridge and Collective Brutality are the top performers for cards that currently have no diminishing returns data (no games with multiples in hand yet).
The Rack seriously underperforms, particularly compared to Shrieking Affliction. This seems to imply that Affliction is just more reliable as a win condition than The Rack, even though The Rack can deal damage sooner.
As I mentioned, I do think that we're going to need some more data if we really want to get closer to truthful and accurate numbers. I'm going to continue working on that, skimming videos on Youtube for the data. If anyone has any suggestions for additional data points to look at (combinations of certain cards and correlating win percentages with those combinations, etc.), feel free to let me know and I'll get it included. I'm hoping this could help get the deck performing better than it has been.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Anyways, here are the videos (super-quick rundown of the build and the match I played). I'll try to get a few more in as well, but kind of spreading myself thin between work, family, Skred, and this.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Got quite a bit more data entered now (spreadsheet can be found here, up to 263 games worth. Quick take-aways:
Smallpox numbers have plummeted. Is now the poorest scoring nonland card in the deck.
Raven's Crimes numbers are back up. Still not great in multiples, but good numbers despite that.
The Rack and Shrieking Affliction are pretty close together, both performing not so great.
Funeral Charm performing pretty well.
With the above information, I reworked the deck as follows:
1x Godless Shrine
4x Marsh Flats
4x Mutavault
9x Swamp
2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Ensnaring Bridge
2x The Rack
3x Collective Brutality
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Lingering Souls
3x Raven's Crime
3x Thoughtseize
3x Funeral Charm
4x Liliana of the Veil
3x Bitterblossom
3x Shrieking Affliction
3x Delirium Skeins
3x Leyline of the Void
4x Waste Not
4x Wrench Mind
I've dropped the Rack and Affliction numbers to five, with a 3/2 split of Affliction/Rack. I went with 3 Affliction over 3 Rack due to the nature of there being more sideboard cards against The Rack.
I've dropped Smallpox altogether. When it's good, it's pretty good, but more often than not it seems to be just as bad for us as it is the for the opponent.
In place of Smallpox, I've added Lingering Souls. That makes three copies of Souls and three copies of Bitterblossom. What this does for us is diversify our threats. Before now, opponents could simply lay a threat and try to race our Rack effects, holding cards (usually lands, if possible) to win that race. This meant that we had to not only answer their threat, but continue being able to discard the cards they're holding. This was often tough, if not impossible, to do. With the token generators, however, we put the opponent into a sort of zugzwang. If they don't answer our tokens, they will clock them. If they do expend resources (cards) to answer our tokens, then our Rack effects will clock them. Our discard works with either plan, as our discard can enable Rack damage, or protect our tokens and make sure the opponent can't stabilize. Ensnaring Bridge works just fine with our flying tokens, while impeding the opponent from having the opportunity to topdeck a bigger threat.
We now have a decent "removal" suite, in Fatal Push, Funeral Charm, Collective Brutality, and Ensnaring Bridge, bringing our "removal" numbers to 11 cards. Funeral Charm and Brutality serve double-duty with discard, bringing our discard to 20 (not including lands when we have a Raven's Crime in the graveyard). 10 of those discard spells we have are able to hit lands as well, helping to shore up that weakness (again, not including lands when we have a Raven's Crime in the graveyard). Three of them being instant-speed helps to ensure the opponent can't topdeck a sorcery-speed effect to stabilize when they're hellbent.
All of this combined pressure allows Liliana, who is often safe behind chump blockers or a Bridge, to continuously tick up until we force our opponents to make very difficult sacrifices.
The Wrench Minds were delegated to the sideboard, to be brought in depending on if we're on the play/draw against decks running few (if any) artifacts. I'm running three Delirium Skeins in the side as well, avoiding our Rack plan to be shut off by Leyline of Sanctity. This means that the opponent can still put the Leyline into play and be down that card, but will have little or no effect on us. Waste Not works with this plan, allowing us to refill our hand and/or make more threats that can often swing under Bridge or chump block until our Liliana ultimates. Leyline of the Void seems to have performed very well for the deck, so I stuck with that for graveyard hate. The fourth Collective Brutality is for small-creature matchups and Burn.
I'll continue to keep testing this list, feels really good right now. Unfortunately, it is very expensive. I plan on building it in paper, but that's going to take a little while.
Anyways, I look forward to the feedback, and I hope that this helpful!
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Mutavault wasnt in the contest but Id say I will put it top5 and Smallpox top4
Smallpox is cool because you can 'use' a blank card as discard, helps big time with consistency
And consistency is very important in 8 Rack
IpPlay 3 Funeral Charms for years and still happy
Versatility gives consistency and consistency is a king
I wont go to 5 racks, maybe 7 at max. We need to win games once we neutralized their threats. With 5 racks we will die to opp topdecks too often (discard is weak to topdecks))
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
I wrote above about diversifying threats, using the six token generators, to force an opponent into a sort of zugzwang. If they expend cards from hand to answer the tokens, then they will lose to Rack effects. If they don't, they will lose to tokens. All of that being a dilemma for them while simultaneously having their hand disrupted. It seems that if we go all-in on the Rack plan, we become a slower glass-cannon sort of deck, where it is easier to combat us with strategies like sandbagging lands, racing us with harder-hitting threats (forcing us to have to draw and expend resources answering the threats), or with cards like Leyline. This new direction allows us to play a true control game. With classic lists, we have to draw the right combination of cards, in the right order, at the right time, for the deck to function. Too many Rack effects and not enough discard or removal means we just fall behind. Too much discard and removal and not enough Rack effects means we lose to topdecked with no clock for the opp. With the new game plan, we've solved this problem.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
This seems to imply that 8rack really just isn't a very good deck. I figured that no one would really care to hear that 8rack simply is not a very good deck, as shown via the data, so thought it best that I didn't post a follow up at all if all I was going to do was tell people something that they might not want to hear. Maybe a card will be printed in the future that could help the deck, but out of all of the decks that I've used the data approach on, this one stands out to me as the one where the data seems clear on the nature of the deck itself.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
I apologize to those of you have seen this a couple times now... just want to make sure everyone can see it.
Basically, it seems like Urborg is less relevant than many people thought. I calculated how often we hit BB on turn 2 on the draw and Urborg only affects our 80 odd percent chance by 1-2% (in other words, we only get 1 Urborg / 0 Swamp / 1+ Colorless land hands ~2% of them time). This means we may want to cut the fourth Urborg to save ourselves a real chance of getting legend ruled (with 4 urborg 10% of opening hands have 2 or more Urborg. with 3 Urborg that number drops to about 5%).
Here are the tables, though they are formatted better on reddit:
*4 Urborg*
Colorless | 23 lands | 24 lands
3 | 88.7% | 90.6%
4 | 86.8% | 89.0%
5 | 84.7% | 87.1%
6 | 82.4% | 85.0%
*3 Urborg*
Colorless | 23 lands | 24 lands
3 | 88.5% | 90.4%
4 | 86.5% | 88.6%
5 | 84.2% | 86.6%
6 | 81.7% | 84.4%
I don't want to suggest anything too specific, I'll let you make your own judgments based on the numbers, but I'm interested in trying out 3 urborg and pushing the 5th colorless land (maybe a ghostquarter). Let me know what you think.
too bad math is not easy to confirm
but I have my own conclusions
if you look at transition from 4 urborg, 4 muta (thats shorter)) to 3 urborg 5 muta in 23 land setup
you fall from 86.8 to 84.2. Difference is 2.6. So in first case you have 13.2% to have less than 2 black sources by t2. And 15.8% in second case. So the probability of doing 'bad' is increased by 2.6/13.2, thats 20% increase, not small in my opinion. And we dont want to mulligan in 8Rack.
I played with 4 Urborgs forever and I didnt want to cut one. Smallpox, Liliana and Ravens Crime are 20% of the deck, chances you get one are very high. Fatal Push and fetches also benefit from urborgs.
It should be mentioned that probability of hitting enough lands is "continuous": you lose or gain small percentages that are very hard to distingiush in real game. You just settle for some percentage of fail. You can lower it by sacrificing something else but there is no concrete answer if its better or worse. Even with 30 black sources we arent guaranteed to hit a single black source on t1! And I remember people claiming it is better to play 8 colorless lands with 24 lands...
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
Just to be clear, I was already playing 5 colorless lands. So I'm transitioning from 4 Urborg / 5 Colorless to 3 Urborg / +1 Swamp / 5 Colorless. So that's 87.1 -> 86.6. Which is such a small difference compared to 10.3% of hands with double Urborg vs 5.6%. I'm not claiming that every double Urborg hand is bad, but if some of my double Urborg hands were 1 Urborg / 1 Swamp hands I think more of those hands are keepable and not mulligans. For example I think 2 Urborg / 5 spell hands should be mulliganed in most circumstances.
We certainly have ways to mitigate double urborg hands. Like you said 20% of our deck is built to leverage it, but I think 1 Urborg / 1 Swamp is always better than 2 Urborg. Or at least better 95+% of the time.
Also, I'm not trying to say that 3 Urborg is clearly superior. I think the numbers point to 3 Urborg potentially being better and the only way to confirm this is to test 3 Urborg decks. So hopefully someone out there tests this and comes back with results. Like you said, calculations don't necessarily translate to win percentage in real life.
As the primer says, 8rack is an highly customizable shell. So I went ahead and wanted to build a creature heavier version... This is the list I play-tested in a recent FNM:
4 Pack Rat
4 Nezumi Shortfang
4 Rotting Rats
4 Burglar Rat
4 Chittering Rats
Enchantment
4 Shrieking Affliction
Land
1 Swarmyard
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Mutavault
14 Swamp
4 The Rack
4 Smuggler's Copter
Instant
2 Dismember
Sorcery
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
2 Ravenous Trap
4 Fatal Push
2 Dismember
2 Duress
There were 20 opponents in the FNM and I ended up losing in the semi-finals.
The star was Smuggler's Copter to get more value out of "enter the battlefield" rats such as Burglar Rat or Rotting Rats.
The only addition in the list above from the deck I used at the FNM is Chittering Rats. I found that depite all the discard rats, some opponents kept lands in hand to wreck the main plan. I thought that Chittering Rats could be a way out (unless they fetch), while comboing with the other rats and copter. Although Wrench Mind could also work...
I lost in semi-finals against Burn, which was just too good at top-decking... Do you think I should consider Funeral Charm as an instant speed discard? It also gives swampwalk to the pumped up Pack Rat. Alternatively, Aether Vial could instant cast rats in this setup to discard in the draw phase or crew copters. Another play I see with the vial is cycling with copter and vialing a rat in before the damage phase to pump a pack rat... Or vial a Pack Rat in and double it for just 3 mana
I'm open to any suggestion. This is not meant to be a budget deck, just a creature/tribal rat twist on 8Rack.
Cheers
It could also be a combination of Aether Vial and Cloudstone Curio for soft locking the opponent. But either cases (curio or more rats) is tight, unless I drop down to 8rack instead of the 12 racks I have now... I'm not sure which is best to support the 8rack plan, as the deck is still meant to be 8rack