Guilds of Ravnica has been fully spoiled and it's brewing season. There are a few cards in the set that demand some sort of build around, but as an old school player of abusing Future Sight and Magus of the Future, the power of what could be possible with Experimental Frenzy is too much to pass up on.
Now a lot of you are reading the "You can't play cards from your hand" aspect of the card, and thinking that this is too much of a downside.
But I think those of you who have a little experience with the sort of card advantage you can gain off making the top of your library your "hand" you'll soon see that you're looking to chain spells from this resource (library) anyway, so your hand is superfluous to what you're doing. If your opponents are not dealing with this card, then you will simply out card advantage them.
There are some factors you need to take into consideration when trying to get the most out of a card like Experimental Frenzy.
You want to have as little bottlenecks to gaining advantage. You want to be casting multiple cards per turn, to get value out of it. If you're only playing a single spell each turn then this doesn't progress you as much as you'll like.
"One land per turn" is also a restriction. Once the top of your library is the second land for the turn, it will prevent you from playing out more cards.
Now it must be noted that even if you play a single spell and you hit two lands in the turn, you're still doing the equivalent of drawing two cards. You get to play a spell and play a land. So even in the not best scenario, this card is still gaining you advantage. You are still drawing cards into your hand even with it in play, so your hand is still like a ticking Bomat Courier time-bomb, that can potentially be unleashed if required.
However we are looking to navigate around the second land restriction and also being able to cast multiple spells in a turn, by utilizing a low mana curve and having multiple top of library manipulation cards.
Since starting this thread there are four decks splashing colors to try and get the best engine out of Frenzy.
Mono-Red, Gruul, Izzet and Jund.
I have started testing the Mono-Red, Gruul, but the Izzet and Jund remain concepts. Why not Grixis UBR?
Surely the surveil mechanic in Dimir UB with it's ability to manipulate the top of your deck is going to be the best option?
Well as far as I can tell it's a little bit clunky. Unless you are actually building the deck to leverage your graveyard, then the surveil cards themselves are not really progressing your board in a meaningful manner.
There is also an element that Grixis and cards tied up with surveil often have some sort of card drawing element. Normally this would be great, but just by the fact that we don't care about cards in hand, we don't really want card drawing cards, unless we are simply looking to get that second land off the top of library.
Otherwise you're just paying additional mana for a spell which have draw elements. We are trying to keep the deck as mana efficient as possible. So it just all doesn't quite line up in my opinion.
These decks are thought experiments (apt), and welcome any ideas to cards and build around's to Experimental Frenzy.
There are a lot of ways to view Experimental Frenzy. You can look at the card as the core component of a combo deck and build around it as much as possible to try and do busted things.
You can also just build a deck, and have it as a backup card advantage plan. So once you've emptied your hand you can use this card to help you get further reach from your deck.
I think a lot of competitive decks will be looking to use it in the latter form, building decks that do not necessarily build around it as much.
I'm mentioning these things because, ultimately you want to know if you're trying to be in it for the love of doing more broken things, or trying to stay the course of being as competitive as possible.
How well does the deck function without Experimental Frenzy?
You do have to be prepared for not being able to resolve it in a timely manner. Either being disrupted, counterspells or removal. It might even be that an aggressive deck is pressuring your life total so that casting Experimental Frenzy is a 'turn off' you can't afford.
I mean some games you can go 30 cards deep into your deck (literally half your deck) and never draw one (gad that happened to me the other day, and it felt bad man).
How well does the deck function with Experimental Frenzy?
Your deck might be more geared to work better with it in play. More cards dedicated to mitigating bottlenecks, and an ability to win more games with it remaining in play.
Where have the main bottlenecks occurred in testing?
Well I haven't done a spreadsheet or anything like that. But as a general way to mentally prepare, is that during the early stages it could easily be both lands and mana to cast spells which halt you, sort of on a 50/50 split. Then as the game goes on and you have more mana available, it's often going to be the secondary or more lands that will cause the bottleneck.
This is where the different decks come into play, some offering more top of library manipulation for when you are further into the game, while others providing minimal top of library manipulation, but might focus on more on early game play, or even more mana available for spells.
How many top of library cards should you play?
It would be nice to have a precise science to get right balance, but at the end of the day, it's just nice to have any sort of fun with Experimental Frenzy in play, it normally provides you an advantage.
Through play-testing particular configurations you will find balance needs to be made, and a lot of deck tweaking is going to need to be done to find ratios that work under current metas.
Is the deck designed to win, or is it designed to win more?
That is are you being careful about making your deck competitive so that it does enough to win games with or without Experimental Frenzy in play, or is it designed to just go off hard with it in play? But in that regard is it just going over the top with doing broken plays?
I certainly am a combo player, and I like to design decks that go over the top. So you know I'm being realistic and acknowledging that the decks are probably more inclined to trying to win more when Experimental Frenzy is in play.
However there will be a more competitive ratio I'm sure, you don't want to over do it with playing out all your deck in a few turns, when playing it out over 5 turns might still get you the win, and be more consistent with how the early games play out, etc.
But it is important not to under-cook it as well. Underwhelming turns with Experimental Frenzy can also lose you games, as you've invested a turn to play it, and still designed the deck around it to an extent.
How much conditional interaction do you have?
It's important to note that by virtue of trying to filter through the top of your deck, that you're limited by how much interaction you should put into the deck. Having conditional interaction is certainly going to cause bottlenecks at some stage.
If you specifically play creature removal and come across a creatureless deck, then it will prevent you from gaining card advantage for the turn. Lava Coil is an example of conditional interaction. If your opponent have a hexproof creature and this is your playable card, then you're going to get constrained.
That's why in my opinion Shock and Lightning Strike are generally better than straight up creature removal.
I just wanted to touch upon what the portion of the card "You can't play cards from your hand" actually means for gameplay.
So there can be an aspect where you have played out most of your hand, so are happy to cast Experimental Frenzy and just look to get value.
There are other times where you have functioning cards in hand before you cast Experimental Frenzy and are wondering if to play it or not?
In general I play out the Experimental Frenzy as soon as possible, even if I have cards in hand to further the game-plan. Because you're hoping to have those types of cards on top through the course of turns anyway. This doesn't always work in your favor, you can have some underwhelming turns just getting stuck on one spell or one land a turn, but it allows you to draw cards in your hand, while still playing out cards, and this makes it less appealing for your opponents to remove the Experimental Frenzy even a few turns into it being on the table.
Right so another common scenario is that you have Experimental Frenzy in play and you've built up a hand of like 5 to 7 cards. Does it ever get to the point where you want to use the "3R Destroy Experimental Frenzy"? Well certainly there are times where you get your opponent down to 5 life for example and have a Lightning Strike and Shock in hand, and it just makes sense to go for the win if the mana works out correctly.
In general, you want your opponents to have to deal with it. If it's remaining in play, then chances are they just not going to be able to keep up with you in resources. So even if you have good plays in your hand over time, you're still going to have enough plays from the top of your library, so spending the 3R to remove it, and then another 3R to put another back into play isn't very mana efficient.
However the decks that run Runaway Steam-Kin, this can be done efficiently. It's not intuitive at first, but if you have a couple of Runaway Steam-Kin in play, then often you will have a nice threshold of red spells in hand that will allow you to do this sequence of removing it and then playing another.
So let's say you have 5 red spells in hand, with a couple of your Runaway Steam-Kin's at 3 and 2 counters respectively.
You can add RRR and spend another R to destroy the Experimental Frenzy.
Remember each 3 red spells is going to make you 6 mana with 2 x Runaway Steam-Kin, so effectively any 2 mana or less spells are going to be free to cast. So you can just end up casting all the spells in your hand, and even have enough to pay for putting a spare Experimental Frenzy back into play at the end of the sequence.
It must be noted that Experimental Frenzy can reward you for bad mulligans, as once you get the card down, you're not relying on your current hand to provide the win. As long as you can get to a stage of playing it out, you can recover quickly from initial low starting hands due to mulligans.
This also helps with making mulligan decisions, as a lot of decks find it hard to pull back resources if they mull too low.
If you have two lands and a Experimental Frenzy in hand, often this is enough of a game-plan. You're expecting to draw a couple of lands in your future so, your plan might simply to play it on Turn 4 or 5, and then it didn't actually matter what the rest of your hand was. Not entirely the case, you probably need some interaction with opponents early, but often you do have two land starting hands and simply because of the power of Experimental Frenzy you can be happy that you will be able to have enough raw power to potentially win games.
There are some cards that can really help to navigate a better sequence of plays using Experimental Frenzy, are are basically a common thread between all the decks, in some manner.
The ability to scry means that you can avoid potential top of library bottlenecks. It's also useful for the additional mana it can provide once it transforms into Treasure Cove, and you can still use the draw to filter away top of library.
With being mana efficient this card allows you to filter away top of library bottlenecks easily, but also serves as a means to finish off opponents at the close of the game, even in the face of life gain.
The ability to discard a card to draw a card means that you can filter away the top card of your library. It also can be used to remove problematic creatures.
Although you need a high threshold of Red spells in order to make this card efficient, it's ability to generate vasts amounts of mana, means that you can string together huge turns casting a lot of your deck. It really helps to mitigate mana constraints, which is a huge consideration when it comes to Experimental Frenzy.
These are combo card advantage decks. Once you are setup, your ability to cast all the cards in your deck works in an exponential manner each turn.
Overall the strategy is simply go wide with out resourcing your opponent with card advantage. Your cards on a one-for-one basis are probably not going to be as powerful, so you're not looking to "push through" damage during the early or even potentially mid stages. If your creatures are outclassed, then this is fine as long as you can survive to the stage that you are playing out two or three spells a turn and by the end you'll be casting more like five spells a turn, and literally casting your entire deck as it works in an exponential way to be able to cast cards from the top of your library.
Your ability to navigate around the bottleneck of secondary, or even more lands can be mitigated.
You will be putting exponential amounts of mana (or land) into play, giving you more and more mana to spend each turn.
Once you get to the stage of playing out most of the cards in your deck, it doesn't really matter what your opponents have, as long as they are not killing you.
You could setup for alpha strikes towards the end if your opponents creatures were posing threatening blocks during the course of the game.
The Shock's and Lightning Strike's gives you reach and you will often burn your opponent out in the final stages of casting your entire deck.
Once you've gotten through your deck, which is what we are looking to do, then you can use the two Wand of Vertebrae to shuffle back in 10 cards.
Either way it's going to be usually too much for your opponents to handle.
With this in mind we can work around creature board wipes. Direct damage can be used to finish off the game by dealing 28 extra damage to the opponents life total (you can use a couple of additional Shock's as well the Lightning Stikes's), by using the two Wand of Vertebrae at the close of the game.
I thought it appropriate that you could actually run a mono-red version. You have less control over the top of your library, but also being realistic that mana is also a bottleneck for Experimental Frenzy an all mountains version can still combo off hard.
With Runaway Steam-Kin we are trying to chain-off casting as many red spells in a turn, constantly adding RRR, and just potentially never stopping if you can avoid bottlenecks.
Treasure Map also got the full quota of four and we will be using this to filter away bottlenecks as best as possible. Even when it transforms into Treasure Cove the draw ability can be helpful on getting a bottleneck off the top, and you can never have enough mana in this deck, so the Treasure tokens are welcome.
Goblin Chainwhirler is still a necessary evil, as aggressive decks can look to use token creatures, and the 3/3 first strike is still very good in the current meta.
Since starting this thread my lists have changed since testing. The Gruul deck I originally posted was based off the Jund version, and was a budgeted version of that. Subsequently I focused it more on the Mono-Red shell splashing Green for some key premium cards in Wayward Swordtooth and Dryad Greenseeker.
Wayward Swordtooth allows you to play a second land for the turn, and in multiples can even play out further lands. The knock on effect of getting extra mana into play each turn, also means that you have more mana available to cast multiple cards each turn.
Dryad Greenseeker allows you to draw any land on top of library preventing bottlenecks. With Experimental Frenzy you have the knowledge already, so you don't need to tap it unnecessarily hoping for a hit.
Wand of Vertebrae can be used in conjunction with Dryad Greenseeker to potentially know what your top of library card is and whether you might want to put it into your graveyard, so that you can draw into more relevant cards. So these cards work well together when Experimental Frenzy is not in play.
Being able to shuffle your library with Evolving Wilds is always important when it comes to getting new cards to play off the top of your library. These do come with a downside that it will slow down the deck.
The trick with Experimental Frenzy is to be able to navigate around getting bottlenecked by the top of your library, either being an expensive card to cast, or not relevant, or more likely the secondary (or more) lands that you can't play for the turn.
So it's imperative that your spells are able to manipulate the top of your library as well as being efficient so that you can cast as many cards as you can each turn.
With Runaway Steam-Kin we are trying to chain-off casting as many red spells in a turn, constantly adding RRR, and just potentially never stopping if you can avoid bottlenecks.
So being as there are blue spells in the deck as well, it's vitally important that the mono-blue spells are premium for navigating the combo nature of the deck.
You can see that the common mechanic they have is scry and this is key for manipulating how we are able to navigate and sequence through any potential bottlenecks.
Treasure Map is one of the main ways of manipulating the top of our deck, and even when it gets transformed into Treasure Cove, you can use the draw to potentially draw the bottleneck card, which is likely a land.
I will point out that the deck doesn't have any shuffle effects, like Evolving Wilds or Field of Ruin like the Jund version does. The reason for this is that our main way of top of library manipulation is scry, so often it's lands we are putting on the bottom, and we don't want to be shuffling them to bottleneck us in the immediate future.
The way that we are winning is by literally casting all the cards in the deck, and then we can use Wand of Vertebrae to shuffle in win conditions like Lightning Strike a further 8 times to reduce opponents life total to zero, even in the face of life gain.
I've taken the planeswalkers before testing, but left the comments here, as these still could be tested. The planeswalkers in the deck have the ability to draw the top card of your deck and are also importantly red spells for Runaway Steam-Kin.
They have a turn-by-turn ability to remove at the very least the secondary (or more) land off the top, or just spells that don't seem great at the time.
Sarkhan, Fireblood is going to be used mainly for the "[+1]: You may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.".
His ultimate however does present another win condition.
Jaya Ballard is more expensive, but you can also use her to discard cards to draw cards, meaning you can remove a bottleneck card from the top of your library. Her ability to produce RRR for instants actually only have 12 targets in Shock, Lightning Strike and the colorless portion of Perilous Voyage. But this can be enough to chain off an important turn.
Her ultimate can be relevant as Experimental Frenzy does prevent you from using the cards in your hand, so you can selectively put potential cards into your graveyard that you can look to use with her ultimate being able to get around the restriction.
This was actually the alpha deck when I started this thread, but it remains untested due to cost $$.
I've changed the juxtapose of much of this thread to reflect it's evolution, so I've left much of the wording in the card choices below to have an idea of thought processess.
Wayward Swordtooth allows you to play a second land for the turn, and in multiples can even play out further lands. The knock on effect of getting extra mana into play each turn, also means that you have more mana available to cast multiple cards each turn.
Dryad Greenseeker allows you to draw any land on top of library preventing bottlenecks. With Experimental Frenzy you have the knowledge already, so you don't need to tap it unnecessarily hoping for a hit.
Enter the Unknown will not only draw you a land off the top of your library, which could be preventing further top of library casting, but also allows for additional lands to be played out. As long as we have a creature to target, this card is a major boon for this strategy.
There are a number of potential explore creatures in Standard, but I choose Jadelight Ranger on it's sheer power to filter through your deck. Potentially removing lands from the top of your deck efficiently, or simply putting cards into graveyard that you feel unnecessary or causing a bottleneck to your play.
Llanowar Scout is a card the can navigate around not playing land cards from your hand, so any lands you draw, and you will because of explore mechanic and Dryad Greenseeker, will mean that you can put these into play.
The deck could just be straight Gruul (Red/Green), but I decided that Assassin's Trophy would be the best "unconditional" removal, and is also cheap to cast.
Duress at one mana can help against a myriad of decks that are looking to load up on spells, to perhaps disrupt you or assemble their own combos. Obviously has the usual nice early turn play to disrupt your opponents, but has the advantage with Experimental Frenzy in play as not being a "dead draw" with empty handed opponents (holding lands, etc), as it really only comes at the cost of a mana, rather than your draw for the turn.
One of the better spells to push through getting Experimental Frenzy into play against control decks or getting a critical removal spell they might have been saving for it.
We have Shock and Lightning Strike as cheap interaction as well, and not reliant on creature targets, which is important.
Tomb Robber is perfect for trading in the cards in your hand for the card that might be causing a bottleneck on-top of your library. Because you have perfect information about the top of your library, you can easily spend 1 to draw a land, or even just put a spell into graveyard to keep the cards relevant for what you want. It's 1/1 stat will soon be put past the Goblin Chainwhirler strike range with the explore ability.
Deadeye Tracker can also be used to manipulate the top of your library with explore mechanic. You will probably be main phasing the ability in response to land clumps, etc, but you can use it to disrupt opposing graveyard strategies.
Dismissive Pyromancer can be use to clear the top of your library for R and can also be used as creature removal.
Wand of Vertebrae is also a tech card to help with filtering away the top cards of your library if some bottleneck prevents you from casting further cards. It's also a cheap spell at 1 so certainly not unhappy about casting multiple versions. It's also part of our finishing game plan, by shuffling in our kill cards multiple times.
The land base is probably not optimal, but didn't want to get too tied up on this aspect yet, plenty of time to smooth it out, including optimal number.
I wanted 3 x Evolving Wilds for the shuffle aspect. Being able to shuffle your library is always important when it comes to getting new cards to play off the top of your library. These do come with a downside that it will slow down the deck. You also need to be patient with them, using them at the right time. Unless of course it's early game and you simply need the mana. Same with Field of Ruin, you're using this as much for the shuffle effect at times, as well as being able to handle opponents non-basic land threats.
It might be that there are enough top card manipulation cards with the rest of the deck, that these numbers could be decreased for sure. It could realistically simply be mana available that is the bottleneck, so this is going to be something to look forward to during play testing getting ratios right.
So the most costly card in the deck is Experimental Frenzy itself. And if you already have one in play and see another as your top of library, this is obviously not great.
You're hoping that you have a Wand of Vertebrae in play to put the additional Experimental Frenzy into your graveyard in this situation.
I would like to only play maybe 3 of them for this reason, but this is a combo deck, so I feel like with Assassin's Trophy and Vraska's Contempt being popular removal cards in the format, and coming up against potential counter magic in Negate, etc, that running the full quota is probably the best way to test it, then this number could be trimmed down, once you get a feel for how the format is going to look to mainly interact with you. Does the deck function without Experimental Frenzy in play?
Well on the whole the card quality is fairly low powered. Low costed creatures and spells AND you're not looking to finish opponents too quickly either. You're looking to overwhelm them with card advantage, which the deck does not have a lot of on a one-for-one card basis without Experimental Frenzy in play.
There is Jadelight Ranger and Dryad Greenseeker to gain some card advantage, but these are not going to be enough on their own most games.
So the simple answer is most likely no. You will need to have your Experimental Frenzy engine going at some stage during the course of the game, realistically to beat decks.
But the deck is setup to stabilize to a degree before you can get an Experimental Frenzy online. So you can play out the game getting disrupted until eventually you can stick a permanent Frenzy.
I feel that it can deal with opposing aggressive decks, by simply having enough blockers in conjunction with Shock and Lightning Strike to finish off bigger threats. This should be enough in the early game to get you into the mid-game with Experimental Frenzy, in which you can take over.
Any sort of two for ones that you might be getting disadvantaged over, will soon be recouped.
Against control we do have Duress to try and time putting an Experimental Frenzy onto the battlefield.
But is the deck aggressive enough on it's own without Experimental Frenzy to get a control opponent? I mean it is possible, but probably on average they have enough answers to what you're doing, if you are naturally just drawing a card per turn.
There are certainly some cards that are average without Experimental Frenzy in play. Wand of Vertebrae doesn't do a whole lot on it's own, just helping with card filtering in tight spots. Enter the Unknown can be a cheap cantrip without Experimental Frenzy, but could also just end up being a weak pump spell.
So you could win games off opponents stumbling, but it is best to think about this as a combo deck, with Experimental Frenzy being the key piece.
Now there is the whole aspect of drawing cards for your turn and not being able to play them. So if a number of turns pass without Experimental Frenzy being removed by your opponents, then you are storing up potential resources. It's a slight double edged sword if your opponents remove it, because then you now have your hand back to play with.
I haven't thought of a sideboards yet, don't really think until other Standard brews start popping up post rotation that it's worth while.
I'm not exactly sure how you're planning to kill your opponent with this list. Stick a Wayward Swordtooth and hope it's good enough? Seems to me like you need to have more payoff cards in the late game to replace some of the air in the deck, like Wand of Vertebrae (not really even sure what this is doing for you).
I would also be a bit concerned about playing a 4cmc enchantment that doesn't generate any value the turn you play it and just gets nailed with Assassin's Trophy, which is going to probably be over-represented in the initial weeks after the set releases. Honestly, I would just play Karn if you're looking to play a 4cmc permanent that generates card advantage. He isn't mana intensive like Experimental Frenzy, doesn't have the downside of shutting your hand off, and can also help you win the late game, so...
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States '09: 14th place. Aiming for better next year.
States '10: 12th place. Aiming for better next year.
I'm not exactly sure how you're planning to kill your opponent with this list. Stick a Wayward Swordtooth and hope it's good enough? Seems to me like you need to have more payoff cards in the late game to replace some of the air in the deck, like Wand of Vertebrae (not really even sure what this is doing for you).
I would also be a bit concerned about playing a 4cmc enchantment that doesn't generate any value the turn you play it and just gets nailed with Assassin's Trophy, which is going to probably be over-represented in the initial weeks after the set releases. Honestly, I would just play Karn if you're looking to play a 4cmc permanent that generates card advantage. He isn't mana intensive like Experimental Frenzy, doesn't have the downside of shutting your hand off, and can also help you win the late game, so...
It's a combo deck. You're playing out most of the deck once the engine is online.
That's why the quality of cards don't need to be high or game finishing on their own, as you're simply going wider than your opponents can handle. It might take awhile, but it's got that inevitability.
It' sort of saying the same thing about any combo deck that is based around a card. We had it with Aetherworks Marvel, then God-Pharaohs Gift.
You're very much all in on the strategy, but the pay off is significantly over-welming, and the purpose of the whole deck is fun.
Every card in the deck is designed to benefit it in some way. Just making a deck that is "well rounded" is not what we are looking to do here.
Goblin Cratermaker ~ "Karn's dead, baby. Karn's dead."
I don't think Karn is a very good option going forward in Standard. That's just my opinion.
Also, I don't foresee Goblin Cratermaker being as anywhere close to as ubiquitous as Vraska's Contempt was this season or probably will be in this upcoming one, so using that as a justification as to why Karn won't be good seems a little loose to me.
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States '09: 14th place. Aiming for better next year.
States '10: 12th place. Aiming for better next year.
I see that you have a bunch of cards that let you play a bunch of additional lands out, but there isn't a true combo engine here. Your plan is to just try to get a million lands into play and then cast a bunch of 1/3s, 2/2s, and Lightning Strikes?
I'm not here to lay beats on your deck, I'm legitimately trying to figure out what's going on with it.
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States '09: 14th place. Aiming for better next year.
States '10: 12th place. Aiming for better next year.
I see that you have a bunch of cards that let you play a bunch of additional lands out, but there isn't a true combo engine here. Your plan is to just try to get a million lands into play and then cast a bunch of 1/3s, 2/2s, and Lightning Strikes?
I'm not here to lay beats on your deck, I'm legitimately trying to figure out what's going on with it.
[EDIT]
I've edited this post to make the win conditions very clear.
We are literally casting all the cards in the deck, to the point that there will be no cards left in library. At this stage we can use Wand of Vertebrae to shuffle in likely all the Lightning Strike's and/or Assassin's Trophy.
We can do this twice for either casting Lightning Strike a further 8 times, dealing another 24 damage to opponents life total, or casting Assassin's Trophy to remove up to 12 permanents during the course of the game.
I decided to replace Dark-Dweller Oracle with Tomb Robber as you can get far more use out of it. Initially I was worried about Tomb Robber being tempo out by Goblin Chainwhirler, but really you should be able to get it out of harms way quickly, with the +1/+1 counters. It'll never be hit and miss as you'll know exactly when you're supposed to use it's ability with Experimental Frenzy giving you perfect information.
Really looking forward an izzet version using the elemental and cheap spells + pingers. I don't really think there is a need for goblin electromancer taking up space taking into account that there are as many cmc1 cantrips in crash through, warlord's fury, opt or even rile as jump-start enablers in maximize velocity or maximize altitude.
Really looking forward an izzet version using the elemental and cheap spells + pingers. I don't really think there is a need for goblin electromancer taking up space taking into account that there are as many cmc1 cantrips in crash through, warlord's fury, opt or even rile as jump-start enablers in maximize velocity or maximize altitude.
You could make a mono-red deck, with one or two mana cards.
The downside is that your ability to manipulate the top of your deck is limited. Even cards that have "draw a card" like Crash Through, Warlord's Fury, Rile cannot be timed very well as they are socery speed and the main bottleneck is your second land on top of library. For example assume all of these are cards you're casting off Experimental Frenzy. Your top card might be another spell, but because they are all sorcery, you just have to draw the card, and then you might then have a top of library card as your secondary land. So you sort of stumble into road blocks as you don't have control. If they were instant speed, then you can keep casting in response to the draw trigger. This is what blue cards are much better at being instant speed.
However I think a "tech" card in a mono-red build would be Sarkhan, Fireblood purely using the "[+1]: You may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.", as a way at the very least filter away that secondary land.
I'm still formulating an Izzet build, but I do think there is no harm in coming up with a mono-red build as well.
I personally like the idea of playing Electrostatic Field in either version to add a good deal of chip damage as you're playing all your other spells and give a decent blocker at the same time.
Edit:And on that note.... Guttersnipe is not as good, but also along the same ideas. Maybe even a Temur with Goblin Electromancer for cost reduction as well. Just throwing out some ideas.
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First of all, congratulations for all the work put into the thread.
I like the approach on the izzet version, however I'm not sure how adding a bunch of 3 or even 4 and 5 drops could help any bottlenecking issues of the deck.
Removing those high drops could lower the land count and therefore reduce the possibility of drawing into lands or expensive spells.
Maybe a plan B of Electrostatic field or Guttersnipe could help getting there whenever you don't have a Runaway steam-kin on the battlefield. Also adding a couple of Siren stormtamercould help you protect the elemental. It would also lessen the need of going off in just 1 turn, since just chaining a bunch of spells throughout 2 turns would get the job done anyway.
I personally like the idea of playing Electrostatic Field in either version to add a good deal of chip damage as you're playing all your other spells and give a decent blocker at the same time.
Edit:And on that note.... Guttersnipe is not as good, but also along the same ideas. Maybe even a Temur with Goblin Electromancer for cost reduction as well. Just throwing out some ideas.
Yup I like this idea. I'm going to go with the Electrostatic Field as the 4 toughness is good at defending some of the planeswalkers as well and is one mana cheaper than the Goblin Electromancer, even if the downside of not being as quick to kill.
First of all, congratulations for all the work put into the thread.
I like the approach on the izzet version, however I'm not sure how adding a bunch of 3 or even 4 and 5 drops could help any bottlenecking issues of the deck.
Removing those high drops could lower the land count and therefore reduce the possibility of drawing into lands or expensive spells.
Maybe a plan B of Electrostatic field or Guttersnipe could help getting there whenever you don't have a Runaway steam-kin on the battlefield. Also adding a couple of Siren stormtamercould help you protect the elemental. It would also lessen the need of going off in just 1 turn, since just chaining a bunch of spells throughout 2 turns would get the job done anyway.
The planeswalkers are in the deck for a very specific reason. There are two types of bottlenecks.
1) Mana for casting spells on top of library.
2) Secondary (or more) lands on top of library.
Now it's important to note which of the bottlenecks often comes first. Obviously in the earlier stages you'll find that you will come up against mana constraints, but as the game goes on, the weight of the problem is often the secondary land.
So there is a real importance to balance up cheap spells, with actually being able to manipulate the top of your library.
Now admittedly you could use other cheaper spells to try and do this. Say for example play 4 x Treasure Map and then another Wand of Vertebrae.
And honestly this could be really good, and certainly worth testing.
But instead I went for the planeswalkers at higher costs, but higher payoffs as well. They are red spells for Runaway Steam-Kin, so I was consciously trying to keep the red spell count high for the deck. Plus they do give you alternative win conditions WITHOUT Experimental Frenzy. Now the deck might just not work unless you do stick a Frenzy during some part of the game anyway, so that's just dreaming, but it does give you a slightly different angle. Finally I just wanted them for sytle points, nothing more than I like planeswalkers a lot
I do think that Ral, Izzet Viceroy is the weakest, as he just costs more, but it's hard to put a Izzet deck together and not at least have him somewhere.
Jaya Ballard is actually good in the deck. You can almost think of her as costing 2 as you can potentially string together casting a bunch of instants off her.
There is the situation where you are literally scrying tons of lands to the bottom of your library and there are no shuffle effects (expect Wand of Vertebrae), so when you do get through your library you will have a bunch of lands on the bottom.
So Jaya Ballard ability to draw 3 actually important, to prevent a really big clog of lands.
Then Sarkhan, Fireblood is perfect at 3 mana, it's like a no cost Treasure Map on subsequent turns, with an inbuilt win condition. Of course I have rosy-tinted glasses on and planeswalkers can be removed more readily than Treasure Map.
I'm not sure about Siren Stormtamer purely for the fact that blue mana is so precious each turn. I think it's almost going to be impossible to hold up U through out the game.
So I could definitely see removing some number of planeswalkers, probably this configuration is more competitive
Ooh! Would any jump start cards be viable with getting cards out of our hands that need to be out and to get cards off the top of our deck, say like radical idea or risk factor ??? Especially seeing we gam have Goblin Electromancer
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I've been messing with a version of Mono Red to varying results. I didn't want to muck up the deck with cards solely devoted to fixing the top of my deck like the Wand. Instead I'm trying to cut as many lands as possible by maximizing the number of 1cc spells and finding mana producers in other places. Goblin Prospector has been amazing at trading some junky goblins into the mana to cast experiment and to keep the chain going once started. Runaway Steam-Kin is the obvious MVP.
Ooh! Would any jump start cards be viable with getting cards out of our hands that need to be out and to get cards off the top of our deck, say like radical idea or risk factor ??? Especially seeing we gam have Goblin Electromancer
I did mentioned that jump-start does have some merit with being able to discard them, and then cast them, to mitigate the "You can't play cards from your hand".
The problem with Risk Factor and Radical Idea, is that with Experimental Frenzy in play they can just let you draw the cards, as you can't play them anyway.
There really isn't any quality jump-start cards unfortunately in my opinion, to work them in in a really powerful way. I do have 1 x Direct Current in the mono-red version, more or less to test it out.
I've been messing with a version of Mono Red to varying results. I didn't want to muck up the deck with cards solely devoted to fixing the top of my deck like the Wand. Instead I'm trying to cut as many lands as possible by maximizing the number of 1cc spells and finding mana producers in other places. Goblin Prospector has been amazing at trading some junky goblins into the mana to cast experiment and to keep the chain going once started. Runaway Steam-Kin is the obvious MVP.
Yeah nice angle, the 16 lands to lower the land bottlenecks and then the spell and mana portion should be flowing nicely. The downside is of course a little risky with mulligans having no lands, but certainly this is one of the ways to go with Experimental Frenzy.
Are there any cards that can make you punch through damage more with your small creatures? I'm a bit worried that a few ground creatures gumming up the ground is going to stop your momentum too often.
I think the Shock or Lightning Strike in combination with your creatures, is too many 2-for-1 to get traction the way you'd like.
I'd need to go through all the cards to find a possible way of punching through damage more with small creatures, so can't help you until then, but I like the direction you're heading.
No but it lets you take lands off the top which is what I've seen as the main problem with the deck so far.
And if you don't need to use the draw you get reach 5 damage can close a game
Watching this thread with great interest. The primer is wonderfully laid out - great work! I also want this so happen so desperately. The inclusion of Wayward Swordtooth seems pretty genius to me though I am liking the red-dominant direction that the discussion is heading. Have you tested the deck much? Or is this mostly based on theory?
Your decklist titled: "Experimental Frenzy, Caffeine Pill Party" says 21 lands, but i count 20. just a heads up. my guess is another field or ruin was supposed to go in?
If you can work Zhalfirin Void it would work wonders for helping the consistency once it gets going. (edit: you can prob only pull it off in mono red, i feel like adding it to izzet version would hurt it.
Now a lot of you are reading the "You can't play cards from your hand" aspect of the card, and thinking that this is too much of a downside.
But I think those of you who have a little experience with the sort of card advantage you can gain off making the top of your library your "hand" you'll soon see that you're looking to chain spells from this resource (library) anyway, so your hand is superfluous to what you're doing. If your opponents are not dealing with this card, then you will simply out card advantage them.
There are some factors you need to take into consideration when trying to get the most out of a card like Experimental Frenzy.
You want to have as little bottlenecks to gaining advantage. You want to be casting multiple cards per turn, to get value out of it. If you're only playing a single spell each turn then this doesn't progress you as much as you'll like.
"One land per turn" is also a restriction. Once the top of your library is the second land for the turn, it will prevent you from playing out more cards.
Now it must be noted that even if you play a single spell and you hit two lands in the turn, you're still doing the equivalent of drawing two cards. You get to play a spell and play a land. So even in the not best scenario, this card is still gaining you advantage. You are still drawing cards into your hand even with it in play, so your hand is still like a ticking Bomat Courier time-bomb, that can potentially be unleashed if required.
However we are looking to navigate around the second land restriction and also being able to cast multiple spells in a turn, by utilizing a low mana curve and having multiple top of library manipulation cards.
Since starting this thread there are four decks splashing colors to try and get the best engine out of Frenzy.
Mono-Red, Gruul, Izzet and Jund.
I have started testing the Mono-Red, Gruul, but the Izzet and Jund remain concepts.
Why not Grixis UBR?
Surely the surveil mechanic in Dimir UB with it's ability to manipulate the top of your deck is going to be the best option?
Well as far as I can tell it's a little bit clunky. Unless you are actually building the deck to leverage your graveyard, then the surveil cards themselves are not really progressing your board in a meaningful manner.
There is also an element that Grixis and cards tied up with surveil often have some sort of card drawing element. Normally this would be great, but just by the fact that we don't care about cards in hand, we don't really want card drawing cards, unless we are simply looking to get that second land off the top of library.
Otherwise you're just paying additional mana for a spell which have draw elements. We are trying to keep the deck as mana efficient as possible. So it just all doesn't quite line up in my opinion.
These decks are thought experiments (apt), and welcome any ideas to cards and build around's to Experimental Frenzy.
You can also just build a deck, and have it as a backup card advantage plan. So once you've emptied your hand you can use this card to help you get further reach from your deck.
I think a lot of competitive decks will be looking to use it in the latter form, building decks that do not necessarily build around it as much.
I'm mentioning these things because, ultimately you want to know if you're trying to be in it for the love of doing more broken things, or trying to stay the course of being as competitive as possible.
How well does the deck function without Experimental Frenzy?
You do have to be prepared for not being able to resolve it in a timely manner. Either being disrupted, counterspells or removal. It might even be that an aggressive deck is pressuring your life total so that casting Experimental Frenzy is a 'turn off' you can't afford.
I mean some games you can go 30 cards deep into your deck (literally half your deck) and never draw one (gad that happened to me the other day, and it felt bad man).
How well does the deck function with Experimental Frenzy?
Your deck might be more geared to work better with it in play. More cards dedicated to mitigating bottlenecks, and an ability to win more games with it remaining in play.
Where have the main bottlenecks occurred in testing?
Well I haven't done a spreadsheet or anything like that. But as a general way to mentally prepare, is that during the early stages it could easily be both lands and mana to cast spells which halt you, sort of on a 50/50 split. Then as the game goes on and you have more mana available, it's often going to be the secondary or more lands that will cause the bottleneck.
This is where the different decks come into play, some offering more top of library manipulation for when you are further into the game, while others providing minimal top of library manipulation, but might focus on more on early game play, or even more mana available for spells.
How many top of library cards should you play?
It would be nice to have a precise science to get right balance, but at the end of the day, it's just nice to have any sort of fun with Experimental Frenzy in play, it normally provides you an advantage.
Through play-testing particular configurations you will find balance needs to be made, and a lot of deck tweaking is going to need to be done to find ratios that work under current metas.
Is the deck designed to win, or is it designed to win more?
That is are you being careful about making your deck competitive so that it does enough to win games with or without Experimental Frenzy in play, or is it designed to just go off hard with it in play? But in that regard is it just going over the top with doing broken plays?
I certainly am a combo player, and I like to design decks that go over the top. So you know I'm being realistic and acknowledging that the decks are probably more inclined to trying to win more when Experimental Frenzy is in play.
However there will be a more competitive ratio I'm sure, you don't want to over do it with playing out all your deck in a few turns, when playing it out over 5 turns might still get you the win, and be more consistent with how the early games play out, etc.
But it is important not to under-cook it as well. Underwhelming turns with Experimental Frenzy can also lose you games, as you've invested a turn to play it, and still designed the deck around it to an extent.
How much conditional interaction do you have?
It's important to note that by virtue of trying to filter through the top of your deck, that you're limited by how much interaction you should put into the deck. Having conditional interaction is certainly going to cause bottlenecks at some stage.
If you specifically play creature removal and come across a creatureless deck, then it will prevent you from gaining card advantage for the turn.
Lava Coil is an example of conditional interaction. If your opponent have a hexproof creature and this is your playable card, then you're going to get constrained.
That's why in my opinion Shock and Lightning Strike are generally better than straight up creature removal.
I just wanted to touch upon what the portion of the card "You can't play cards from your hand" actually means for gameplay.
So there can be an aspect where you have played out most of your hand, so are happy to cast Experimental Frenzy and just look to get value.
There are other times where you have functioning cards in hand before you cast Experimental Frenzy and are wondering if to play it or not?
In general I play out the Experimental Frenzy as soon as possible, even if I have cards in hand to further the game-plan. Because you're hoping to have those types of cards on top through the course of turns anyway. This doesn't always work in your favor, you can have some underwhelming turns just getting stuck on one spell or one land a turn, but it allows you to draw cards in your hand, while still playing out cards, and this makes it less appealing for your opponents to remove the Experimental Frenzy even a few turns into it being on the table.
Right so another common scenario is that you have Experimental Frenzy in play and you've built up a hand of like 5 to 7 cards. Does it ever get to the point where you want to use the "3R Destroy Experimental Frenzy"? Well certainly there are times where you get your opponent down to 5 life for example and have a Lightning Strike and Shock in hand, and it just makes sense to go for the win if the mana works out correctly.
In general, you want your opponents to have to deal with it. If it's remaining in play, then chances are they just not going to be able to keep up with you in resources. So even if you have good plays in your hand over time, you're still going to have enough plays from the top of your library, so spending the 3R to remove it, and then another 3R to put another back into play isn't very mana efficient.
However the decks that run Runaway Steam-Kin, this can be done efficiently. It's not intuitive at first, but if you have a couple of Runaway Steam-Kin in play, then often you will have a nice threshold of red spells in hand that will allow you to do this sequence of removing it and then playing another.
So let's say you have 5 red spells in hand, with a couple of your Runaway Steam-Kin's at 3 and 2 counters respectively.
You can add RRR and spend another R to destroy the Experimental Frenzy.
Remember each 3 red spells is going to make you 6 mana with 2 x Runaway Steam-Kin, so effectively any 2 mana or less spells are going to be free to cast. So you can just end up casting all the spells in your hand, and even have enough to pay for putting a spare Experimental Frenzy back into play at the end of the sequence.
It must be noted that Experimental Frenzy can reward you for bad mulligans, as once you get the card down, you're not relying on your current hand to provide the win. As long as you can get to a stage of playing it out, you can recover quickly from initial low starting hands due to mulligans.
This also helps with making mulligan decisions, as a lot of decks find it hard to pull back resources if they mull too low.
If you have two lands and a Experimental Frenzy in hand, often this is enough of a game-plan. You're expecting to draw a couple of lands in your future so, your plan might simply to play it on Turn 4 or 5, and then it didn't actually matter what the rest of your hand was. Not entirely the case, you probably need some interaction with opponents early, but often you do have two land starting hands and simply because of the power of Experimental Frenzy you can be happy that you will be able to have enough raw power to potentially win games.
The ability to scry means that you can avoid potential top of library bottlenecks. It's also useful for the additional mana it can provide once it transforms into Treasure Cove, and you can still use the draw to filter away top of library.
With being mana efficient this card allows you to filter away top of library bottlenecks easily, but also serves as a means to finish off opponents at the close of the game, even in the face of life gain.
The ability to discard a card to draw a card means that you can filter away the top card of your library. It also can be used to remove problematic creatures.
Although you need a high threshold of Red spells in order to make this card efficient, it's ability to generate vasts amounts of mana, means that you can string together huge turns casting a lot of your deck. It really helps to mitigate mana constraints, which is a huge consideration when it comes to Experimental Frenzy.
Overall the strategy is simply go wide with out resourcing your opponent with card advantage. Your cards on a one-for-one basis are probably not going to be as powerful, so you're not looking to "push through" damage during the early or even potentially mid stages. If your creatures are outclassed, then this is fine as long as you can survive to the stage that you are playing out two or three spells a turn and by the end you'll be casting more like five spells a turn, and literally casting your entire deck as it works in an exponential way to be able to cast cards from the top of your library.
Your ability to navigate around the bottleneck of secondary, or even more lands can be mitigated.
You will be putting exponential amounts of mana (or land) into play, giving you more and more mana to spend each turn.
Once you get to the stage of playing out most of the cards in your deck, it doesn't really matter what your opponents have, as long as they are not killing you.
You could setup for alpha strikes towards the end if your opponents creatures were posing threatening blocks during the course of the game.
The Shock's and Lightning Strike's gives you reach and you will often burn your opponent out in the final stages of casting your entire deck.
Once you've gotten through your deck, which is what we are looking to do, then you can use the two Wand of Vertebrae to shuffle back in 10 cards.
Either way it's going to be usually too much for your opponents to handle.
With this in mind we can work around creature board wipes. Direct damage can be used to finish off the game by dealing 28 extra damage to the opponents life total (you can use a couple of additional Shock's as well the Lightning Stikes's), by using the two Wand of Vertebrae at the close of the game.
With Runaway Steam-Kin we are trying to chain-off casting as many red spells in a turn, constantly adding RRR, and just potentially never stopping if you can avoid bottlenecks.
Dismissive Pyromancer and Dark-Dweller Oracle are our tech creature card for mono-red to manipulate top of library. You can sacrifice Electrostatic Field, or indeed Dark-Dweller Oracle to themselves, to clear off the top of your library if you are really stuck to rattle off a big turn.
Treasure Map also got the full quota of four and we will be using this to filter away bottlenecks as best as possible. Even when it transforms into Treasure Cove the draw ability can be helpful on getting a bottleneck off the top, and you can never have enough mana in this deck, so the Treasure tokens are welcome.
Goblin Chainwhirler is still a necessary evil, as aggressive decks can look to use token creatures, and the 3/3 first strike is still very good in the current meta.
4 Experimental Frenzy
Creatures (16)
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
3 Dark-Dweller Oracle
4 Dismissive Pyromancer
2 Electrostatic Field
3 Goblin Chainwhirler
4 Shock
4 Lightning Strike
4 Lava Coil
Artifacts (6)
2 Wand of Vertebrae
4 Treasure Map
22 Mountain
Since starting this thread my lists have changed since testing. The Gruul deck I originally posted was based off the Jund version, and was a budgeted version of that. Subsequently I focused it more on the Mono-Red shell splashing Green for some key premium cards in Wayward Swordtooth and Dryad Greenseeker.
Wayward Swordtooth allows you to play a second land for the turn, and in multiples can even play out further lands. The knock on effect of getting extra mana into play each turn, also means that you have more mana available to cast multiple cards each turn.
Dryad Greenseeker allows you to draw any land on top of library preventing bottlenecks. With Experimental Frenzy you have the knowledge already, so you don't need to tap it unnecessarily hoping for a hit.
Wand of Vertebrae can be used in conjunction with Dryad Greenseeker to potentially know what your top of library card is and whether you might want to put it into your graveyard, so that you can draw into more relevant cards. So these cards work well together when Experimental Frenzy is not in play.
Being able to shuffle your library with Evolving Wilds is always important when it comes to getting new cards to play off the top of your library. These do come with a downside that it will slow down the deck.
4 Experimental Frenzy
Creatures (14)
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
4 Dismissive Pyromancer
1 Dark-Dweller Oracle
3 Dryad Greenseeker
3 Wayward Swordtooth
4 Shock
4 Lightning Strike
4 Lava Coil
Artifacts (6)
2 Wand of Vertebrae
3 Treasure Map
11 Mountain
4 Rootbound Crag
5 Forest
4 Evolving Wilds
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
The trick with Experimental Frenzy is to be able to navigate around getting bottlenecked by the top of your library, either being an expensive card to cast, or not relevant, or more likely the secondary (or more) lands that you can't play for the turn.
So it's imperative that your spells are able to manipulate the top of your library as well as being efficient so that you can cast as many cards as you can each turn.
With Runaway Steam-Kin we are trying to chain-off casting as many red spells in a turn, constantly adding RRR, and just potentially never stopping if you can avoid bottlenecks.
So being as there are blue spells in the deck as well, it's vitally important that the mono-blue spells are premium for navigating the combo nature of the deck.
Our mono-blue spells are Omenspeaker, Opt, Perilous Voyage.
You can see that the common mechanic they have is scry and this is key for manipulating how we are able to navigate and sequence through any potential bottlenecks.
Treasure Map is one of the main ways of manipulating the top of our deck, and even when it gets transformed into Treasure Cove, you can use the draw to potentially draw the bottleneck card, which is likely a land.
I will point out that the deck doesn't have any shuffle effects, like Evolving Wilds or Field of Ruin like the Jund version does. The reason for this is that our main way of top of library manipulation is scry, so often it's lands we are putting on the bottom, and we don't want to be shuffling them to bottleneck us in the immediate future.
The way that we are winning is by literally casting all the cards in the deck, and then we can use Wand of Vertebrae to shuffle in win conditions like Lightning Strike a further 8 times to reduce opponents life total to zero, even in the face of life gain.
I've taken the planeswalkers before testing, but left the comments here, as these still could be tested.
The planeswalkers in the deck have the ability to draw the top card of your deck and are also importantly red spells for Runaway Steam-Kin.They have a turn-by-turn ability to remove at the very least the secondary (or more) land off the top, or just spells that don't seem great at the time.
Sarkhan, Fireblood is going to be used mainly for the "[+1]: You may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.".
His ultimate however does present another win condition.
Jaya Ballard is more expensive, but you can also use her to discard cards to draw cards, meaning you can remove a bottleneck card from the top of your library. Her ability to produce RRR for instants actually only have 12 targets in Shock, Lightning Strike and the colorless portion of Perilous Voyage. But this can be enough to chain off an important turn.
Her ultimate can be relevant as Experimental Frenzy does prevent you from using the cards in your hand, so you can selectively put potential cards into your graveyard that you can look to use with her ultimate being able to get around the restriction.
4 Experimental Frenzy
Creatures (13)
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
1 Goblin Electromancer
1 Dark-Dweller Oracle
4 Dismissive Pyromancer
3 Omenspeaker
4 Opt
2 Perilous Voyage
4 Shock
4 Lightning Strike
2 Lava Coil
2 Wand of Vertebrae
4 Treasure Map
Lands (21)
4 Steam Vents
4 Sulfur Falls
7 Mountain
6 Island
I've changed the juxtapose of much of this thread to reflect it's evolution, so I've left much of the wording in the card choices below to have an idea of thought processess.
Wayward Swordtooth allows you to play a second land for the turn, and in multiples can even play out further lands. The knock on effect of getting extra mana into play each turn, also means that you have more mana available to cast multiple cards each turn.
Dryad Greenseeker allows you to draw any land on top of library preventing bottlenecks. With Experimental Frenzy you have the knowledge already, so you don't need to tap it unnecessarily hoping for a hit.
Enter the Unknown will not only draw you a land off the top of your library, which could be preventing further top of library casting, but also allows for additional lands to be played out. As long as we have a creature to target, this card is a major boon for this strategy.There are a number of potential explore creatures in Standard, but I choose Jadelight Ranger on it's sheer power to filter through your deck. Potentially removing lands from the top of your deck efficiently, or simply putting cards into graveyard that you feel unnecessary or causing a bottleneck to your play.
Llanowar Scout is a card the can navigate around not playing land cards from your hand, so any lands you draw, and you will because of explore mechanic and Dryad Greenseeker, will mean that you can put these into play.
The deck could just be straight Gruul (Red/Green), but I decided that Assassin's Trophy would be the best "unconditional" removal, and is also cheap to cast.
Duress at one mana can help against a myriad of decks that are looking to load up on spells, to perhaps disrupt you or assemble their own combos. Obviously has the usual nice early turn play to disrupt your opponents, but has the advantage with Experimental Frenzy in play as not being a "dead draw" with empty handed opponents (holding lands, etc), as it really only comes at the cost of a mana, rather than your draw for the turn.
One of the better spells to push through getting Experimental Frenzy into play against control decks or getting a critical removal spell they might have been saving for it.
We have Shock and Lightning Strike as cheap interaction as well, and not reliant on creature targets, which is important.
Tomb Robber is perfect for trading in the cards in your hand for the card that might be causing a bottleneck on-top of your library. Because you have perfect information about the top of your library, you can easily spend 1 to draw a land, or even just put a spell into graveyard to keep the cards relevant for what you want. It's 1/1 stat will soon be put past the Goblin Chainwhirler strike range with the explore ability.
Deadeye Tracker can also be used to manipulate the top of your library with explore mechanic. You will probably be main phasing the ability in response to land clumps, etc, but you can use it to disrupt opposing graveyard strategies.
Dismissive Pyromancer can be use to clear the top of your library for R and can also be used as creature removal.
Wand of Vertebrae is also a tech card to help with filtering away the top cards of your library if some bottleneck prevents you from casting further cards. It's also a cheap spell at 1 so certainly not unhappy about casting multiple versions. It's also part of our finishing game plan, by shuffling in our kill cards multiple times.
The land base is probably not optimal, but didn't want to get too tied up on this aspect yet, plenty of time to smooth it out, including optimal number.
I wanted 3 x Evolving Wilds for the shuffle aspect. Being able to shuffle your library is always important when it comes to getting new cards to play off the top of your library. These do come with a downside that it will slow down the deck. You also need to be patient with them, using them at the right time. Unless of course it's early game and you simply need the mana.
Same with Field of Ruin, you're using this as much for the shuffle effect at times, as well as being able to handle opponents non-basic land threats.It might be that there are enough top card manipulation cards with the rest of the deck, that these numbers could be decreased for sure. It could realistically simply be mana available that is the bottleneck, so this is going to be something to look forward to during play testing getting ratios right.
So the most costly card in the deck is Experimental Frenzy itself. And if you already have one in play and see another as your top of library, this is obviously not great.
You're hoping that you have a Wand of Vertebrae in play to put the additional Experimental Frenzy into your graveyard in this situation.
I would like to only play maybe 3 of them for this reason, but this is a combo deck, so I feel like with Assassin's Trophy and Vraska's Contempt being popular removal cards in the format, and coming up against potential counter magic in Negate, etc, that running the full quota is probably the best way to test it, then this number could be trimmed down, once you get a feel for how the format is going to look to mainly interact with you.
Does the deck function without Experimental Frenzy in play?
Well on the whole the card quality is fairly low powered. Low costed creatures and spells AND you're not looking to finish opponents too quickly either. You're looking to overwhelm them with card advantage, which the deck does not have a lot of on a one-for-one card basis without Experimental Frenzy in play.
There is Jadelight Ranger and Dryad Greenseeker to gain some card advantage, but these are not going to be enough on their own most games.
So the simple answer is most likely no. You will need to have your Experimental Frenzy engine going at some stage during the course of the game, realistically to beat decks.
But the deck is setup to stabilize to a degree before you can get an Experimental Frenzy online. So you can play out the game getting disrupted until eventually you can stick a permanent Frenzy.
I feel that it can deal with opposing aggressive decks, by simply having enough blockers in conjunction with Shock and Lightning Strike to finish off bigger threats. This should be enough in the early game to get you into the mid-game with Experimental Frenzy, in which you can take over.
Any sort of two for ones that you might be getting disadvantaged over, will soon be recouped.
Against control we do have Duress to try and time putting an Experimental Frenzy onto the battlefield.
But is the deck aggressive enough on it's own without Experimental Frenzy to get a control opponent? I mean it is possible, but probably on average they have enough answers to what you're doing, if you are naturally just drawing a card per turn.
There are certainly some cards that are average without Experimental Frenzy in play. Wand of Vertebrae doesn't do a whole lot on it's own, just helping with card filtering in tight spots.
Enter the Unknown can be a cheap cantrip without Experimental Frenzy, but could also just end up being a weak pump spell.So you could win games off opponents stumbling, but it is best to think about this as a combo deck, with Experimental Frenzy being the key piece.
Now there is the whole aspect of drawing cards for your turn and not being able to play them. So if a number of turns pass without Experimental Frenzy being removed by your opponents, then you are storing up potential resources. It's a slight double edged sword if your opponents remove it, because then you now have your hand back to play with.
I haven't thought of a sideboards yet, don't really think until other Standard brews start popping up post rotation that it's worth while.
4 Experimental Frenzy
Creatures (13)
1 Deadeye Tracker
1 Tomb Robber
2 Dryad Greenseeker
1 Llanowar Scout
3 Dismissive Pyromancer
3 Wayward Swordtooth
2 Jadelight Ranger
3 Duress
4 Shock
4 Lightning Strike
4 Assassin's Trophy
Artifacts (5)
2 Wand of Vertebrae
3 Treasure Map
Lands (23)
3 Evolving Wilds
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Dragonskull Summit
4 Woodland Cemetery
2 Mountain
2 Forest
1 Swamp
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
I would also be a bit concerned about playing a 4cmc enchantment that doesn't generate any value the turn you play it and just gets nailed with Assassin's Trophy, which is going to probably be over-represented in the initial weeks after the set releases. Honestly, I would just play Karn if you're looking to play a 4cmc permanent that generates card advantage. He isn't mana intensive like Experimental Frenzy, doesn't have the downside of shutting your hand off, and can also help you win the late game, so...
States '09: 14th place. Aiming for better next year.
States '10: 12th place. Aiming for better next year.
Idaho State Champ: 2011
States '12: 5th place.
That's why the quality of cards don't need to be high or game finishing on their own, as you're simply going wider than your opponents can handle. It might take awhile, but it's got that inevitability.
It' sort of saying the same thing about any combo deck that is based around a card. We had it with Aetherworks Marvel, then God-Pharaohs Gift.
You're very much all in on the strategy, but the pay off is significantly over-welming, and the purpose of the whole deck is fun.
Every card in the deck is designed to benefit it in some way. Just making a deck that is "well rounded" is not what we are looking to do here.
Goblin Cratermaker ~ "Karn's dead, baby. Karn's dead."
I don't think Karn is a very good option going forward in Standard. That's just my opinion.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Also, I don't foresee Goblin Cratermaker being as anywhere close to as ubiquitous as Vraska's Contempt was this season or probably will be in this upcoming one, so using that as a justification as to why Karn won't be good seems a little loose to me.
States '09: 14th place. Aiming for better next year.
States '10: 12th place. Aiming for better next year.
Idaho State Champ: 2011
States '12: 5th place.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
I'm not here to lay beats on your deck, I'm legitimately trying to figure out what's going on with it.
States '09: 14th place. Aiming for better next year.
States '10: 12th place. Aiming for better next year.
Idaho State Champ: 2011
States '12: 5th place.
I've edited this post to make the win conditions very clear.
We are literally casting all the cards in the deck, to the point that there will be no cards left in library. At this stage we can use Wand of Vertebrae to shuffle in likely all the Lightning Strike's and/or Assassin's Trophy.
We can do this twice for either casting Lightning Strike a further 8 times, dealing another 24 damage to opponents life total, or casting Assassin's Trophy to remove up to 12 permanents during the course of the game.
Both of which should finish opponents.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Added
- Tomb Robber
Removed
- Dark-Dweller Oracle
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
The downside is that your ability to manipulate the top of your deck is limited. Even cards that have "draw a card" like Crash Through, Warlord's Fury, Rile cannot be timed very well as they are socery speed and the main bottleneck is your second land on top of library. For example assume all of these are cards you're casting off Experimental Frenzy. Your top card might be another spell, but because they are all sorcery, you just have to draw the card, and then you might then have a top of library card as your secondary land. So you sort of stumble into road blocks as you don't have control. If they were instant speed, then you can keep casting in response to the draw trigger. This is what blue cards are much better at being instant speed.
However I think a "tech" card in a mono-red build would be Sarkhan, Fireblood purely using the "[+1]: You may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.", as a way at the very least filter away that secondary land.
I'm still formulating an Izzet build, but I do think there is no harm in coming up with a mono-red build as well.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Edit:And on that note.... Guttersnipe is not as good, but also along the same ideas. Maybe even a Temur with Goblin Electromancer for cost reduction as well. Just throwing out some ideas.
I like the approach on the izzet version, however I'm not sure how adding a bunch of 3 or even 4 and 5 drops could help any bottlenecking issues of the deck.
Removing those high drops could lower the land count and therefore reduce the possibility of drawing into lands or expensive spells.
Maybe a plan B of Electrostatic field or Guttersnipe could help getting there whenever you don't have a Runaway steam-kin on the battlefield. Also adding a couple of Siren stormtamercould help you protect the elemental. It would also lessen the need of going off in just 1 turn, since just chaining a bunch of spells throughout 2 turns would get the job done anyway.
Finally, I don't see what Goblin cratermakeris doing for the deck.
Added
3 x Electrostatic Field
Removed
1 x Dark-Dweller Oracle
1 x Goblin Cratermaker
1 x Omenspeaker
Goblin Cratermaker I'll have as some number of sideboard cards.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
The planeswalkers are in the deck for a very specific reason. There are two types of bottlenecks.
1) Mana for casting spells on top of library.
2) Secondary (or more) lands on top of library.
Now it's important to note which of the bottlenecks often comes first. Obviously in the earlier stages you'll find that you will come up against mana constraints, but as the game goes on, the weight of the problem is often the secondary land.
So there is a real importance to balance up cheap spells, with actually being able to manipulate the top of your library.
Now admittedly you could use other cheaper spells to try and do this. Say for example play 4 x Treasure Map and then another Wand of Vertebrae.
And honestly this could be really good, and certainly worth testing.
But instead I went for the planeswalkers at higher costs, but higher payoffs as well. They are red spells for Runaway Steam-Kin, so I was consciously trying to keep the red spell count high for the deck. Plus they do give you alternative win conditions WITHOUT Experimental Frenzy. Now the deck might just not work unless you do stick a Frenzy during some part of the game anyway, so that's just dreaming, but it does give you a slightly different angle. Finally I just wanted them for sytle points, nothing more than I like planeswalkers a lot
I do think that Ral, Izzet Viceroy is the weakest, as he just costs more, but it's hard to put a Izzet deck together and not at least have him somewhere.
Jaya Ballard is actually good in the deck. You can almost think of her as costing 2 as you can potentially string together casting a bunch of instants off her.
There is the situation where you are literally scrying tons of lands to the bottom of your library and there are no shuffle effects (expect Wand of Vertebrae), so when you do get through your library you will have a bunch of lands on the bottom.
So Jaya Ballard ability to draw 3 actually important, to prevent a really big clog of lands.
Then Sarkhan, Fireblood is perfect at 3 mana, it's like a no cost Treasure Map on subsequent turns, with an inbuilt win condition. Of course I have rosy-tinted glasses on and planeswalkers can be removed more readily than Treasure Map.
I'm not sure about Siren Stormtamer purely for the fact that blue mana is so precious each turn. I think it's almost going to be impossible to hold up U through out the game.
So I could definitely see removing some number of planeswalkers, probably this configuration is more competitive
Added
3 x Treasure Map
Removed
1 x Sarkhan, Fireblood
1 x Karn, Scion of Urza
1 x Ral, Izzet Viceroy
So I'd still keep one Sarkhan, Fireblood and one Jaya Ballard
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
4 Fanatical Firebrand
4 Ghitu Lavarunner
4 Goblin Banneret
4 Skirk Prospector
4 Torch Courier
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
4 Wily Goblin
4 Maximize Velocity
4 Shock
4 Lightning Strike
Experiments (4)
4 Experimental Frenzy
16 Mountain
Sounds like it does everything you need
The problem with Risk Factor and Radical Idea, is that with Experimental Frenzy in play they can just let you draw the cards, as you can't play them anyway.
There really isn't any quality jump-start cards unfortunately in my opinion, to work them in in a really powerful way. I do have 1 x Direct Current in the mono-red version, more or less to test it out.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Are there any cards that can make you punch through damage more with your small creatures? I'm a bit worried that a few ground creatures gumming up the ground is going to stop your momentum too often.
I think the Shock or Lightning Strike in combination with your creatures, is too many 2-for-1 to get traction the way you'd like.
I'd need to go through all the cards to find a possible way of punching through damage more with small creatures, so can't help you until then, but I like the direction you're heading.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
No but it lets you take lands off the top which is what I've seen as the main problem with the deck so far.
And if you don't need to use the draw you get reach 5 damage can close a game