Most of the decks io listed as not wanting manaplasm in I would have wanted it in.
Simic tempo? Is infiltrator il kor a tempo card? Is snap a tempo card? Manaplasm loves those.
I opted against including Manaplasm in my latest iteration of my peasant cube. The three mana vanilla 1/1, despite the potential to get in for some big swings, just felt too fragile to me. You're required to follow that up with something else on turn four, then again on turn five, and so on. I'd much rather have any of the other commonly used green 3's in that spot. Wolfir Avenger is better for green aggressive decks, imo. He's a surprise removal spell, he hits for 3, he protects himself.
What kind of aggressive or midrange deck are you playing where you don't want to follow up on turns four and five? If you don't do that you're probably losing anyway.
What kind of aggressive or midrange deck are you playing where you don't want to follow up on turns four and five? If you don't do that you're probably losing anyway.
It's less about 'want' and more about variance.
Yes, ideally I'm going to curve out every game and everything is wonderful. I doubt Calibretto meant that he's looking for his Manaplasm decks to stop at CMC 3. More so, I imagine he meant that playing something that allows Manaplasm to attack through every turn can be a tall order.
Sometimes I'm not playing a 4 or 5 drops, sometimes its a two drop, or it's nothing and in those spots Manaplasm is a 1/1 for 2G and that's barely a card. Saying you're probably losing in those spots is dismissing all the variables where that's just false, cause maybe if you were attacking with a 3/3 for 2G every turn instead of Manaplasm you're getting damage through. And saying 'just play things your first main phase' can either be bad or less than ideal in a number of ways. Not saying 100% either way, and that directly ties in with the major issue with Manaplasm.
Consistency is a major part of magic, and it's even more so a factor for decks that only realistically have a number of turns to win in. Manaplasm has a high ceiling for a 3 drop, but it has a horrendous floor and there are a lot of spots where that's where you're standing and I get how that could make the ceiling still not appealing enough.
Less good in triple IXL than I thought it would be, and I think there are less X/1s than you'd think in general in cube. It can be a good defensive creature, but too often it's not more than that. If your format has a ton of X/1s it gains some value, but you really need it to kill something or else it's kind of horrendous.
That sounds a bit funny. An aggro deck that is more midrange than aggro...is not an aggro deck, it's a midrange deck. An aggressive midrange deck maybe, but still a midrange deck. If you don't support green aggro that's fine (I didn't for quite some time), but if you support green aggro then aggro decks are aggro decks and midrange decks are midrange decks.
Yes that's my point, I don't think non-gruul green aggro actually exists at peasant (nor in generic cubes, but that's for a different thread/forum...) and when people say green aggro they really mean a green midrange deck that skews towards the faster end of midrange, one that would always be the 'beat down' in mirrors. Just because a deck has 2/1s for 1 doesn't mean it's going to be an aggro deck in practice even though conventional cube wisdom makes us think that, having almost no reach in green makes those decks a bit slow outside of gruul.
And re: Manaplasm, I don't agree with the sentiment that not playing something during your first main phase on t4 means you're definitely going to lose or that you're going to continue to have cards to play as long as you have the manaplasm. Maybe I'm holding up a reactive spell or something for my opponent's EOT that would be horrendous to play during my first main phase--in those situations, Manaplasm is pretty bad whereas a 3 power 3 drop is maintaining its value through consistency. Manaplasm is better when you can/are playing cards in your first main phase, but that's just not always viable/right and can even be risky when you're not optimally playing your spells in the right window and get punished when your 1/1 for 2G gets removed in resp to that trigger or etc.
And yeah, you do have cards after turn 2 or 3 to play, but turn 4? 5? 6? How much card advantage is this aggro deck getting to not only offset the variance that is directly correlated with the gas you have for your manaplasm, but also the timing of your spells? Sometimes you continue to draw gas, but you can't guarantee that and highly unlikely at peasant that you're making up for that with card draw or selection in these aggro ('aggro') decks. Manaplasm's value in all decks 100% relies on variance, because it relies on you playing spells each turn for it to be above a 1/1 and those decks just arent going to have an abundant variety of ways to generate that beyond the ~coin-flip of land/spell that happens each draw..
"Aggro is aggro" is just nonsense. You have 3.5 green creatures at 1 or 2 mana that can actually attack better than a vanilla 1/1 for 1 or a 2/2 for 2! That's the same as Jackal Pup into Gore-House Chainwalker?
And all the talk of 'should' and 'gameplan' really underestimates how much variance there is in MTG. Players get flooded and screwed CONSTANTLY. Curves go awry. Even if you get a good land-spell mix, your spells have to be the right combo of threats and answers. The opponent's speed/board presence/'gameplan' is tremendously different across different matchups.
The GW deck is an example of why Im really not in love with manaplasm in the 'aggro' decks, and kinda goes against the other arguments being made in here in support of it. 4 other cards that make it more than a 3/3 by themselves, plus those decks are going to flood a ton with 17 lands, so when you're flooding out it sucks and when you're just casting one card it's equal or worse than a centaur courser a real percentage of the time, which sucks. In fact, Manaplasm seems horrendous in that deck. You put something in the way of the GW deck and it just kinda stops or hope it draws removal. You can def cut a land for a spell if you're going for aggro, but even then you fold to creatures that can block and a lot of interaction, which doesn't seem great.
GB is better but its still more midrangey than aggressive, it's just low-curve which is my main issue. The low curve decks aren't really special without the reach, you're hoping that somehow your peasant opponent doesn't have interaction and then you hope your dorks get there. That deck would probably be a lot better if you took out the 3s and 4s and removed the quickly-outclassed 1s. You're not exactly killing them quickly unless you somehow keep the board open and none of your stuff dies, which is an incredibly tall order. I don't think either deck is really competitive. Drawing Rancor would prob win a lot of games, but that speaks more to rancor vs the power of green aggro.
I just goldfished 20 games of the first 7 turns and looked at mana used for spells. Using a pretty boring GW deck that has pretty minimal Manaplasm abuse, as I only drew Spectral once and evoking Briarhorn makes no sense while goldfishing. I ideally would be playing Plasm in UG, where you have some more draw and ways to cheat mana costs, but as a stand alone card Plasm appears to be better than Hungry Spriggan most of the time, though it can be chumped. http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/839787
On the play:
1-1-3-4-4-5-2
0-2-3-4-5-3-0
0-1-3-2-2-0-4 (stuck on 3 lands)
0-2-2-3-3-3-3 (stuck on 3 lands)
0-2-3-4-2-0-4 (7 lands 6 spells)
0-2-3-3-3-4-5
0-1-3-3-2-2-4 (stuck on 3 lands)
0-2-2-4-4-5-6
1-1-1-4-4-4-2
1-2-3-3-2-1-4
On the draw:
1-2-3-4-5-1-0 (8 lands 6 spells)
0-2-2-2-3-4-5 (stuck on 2 lands)
0-2-2-2-0-0-0 (mana and colour screwed)
1-1-3-4-4-3-4
1-2-3-4-6-4-5
0-2-3-4-4-5-2
0-2-3-3-4-5-5
1-2-2-4-4-2-4
0-2-3-4-4-0-1
0-2-3-4-2-0-4
Another thing to note about Manaplasm is just how vanilla it is. Granted a big vanilla guy can sometimes serve as The Abyss in this format, but also I'm not really looking for big vanilla guys. The two things I'd want most from a card like Manaplasm that it doesn't have are some kind of reach like trample or permanent counters instead of an EOT pump. Obviously both of these are probably too good for peasant.
I'm in agreement with Salmo here about the variance, which is what I meant in my other post. You should always be expecting (hoping?) to play something at least the first five or so turns of the game, but that won't always be the case. And even if it is, how long can you keep that up in a non blue aggro or midrange deck with no real way to recoup the cards being cast? And even when you are able to curve perfect and use all your mana efficiently through the first six turns, not every one of those games will have a turn two or three Manaplasm. What about the times when you draw him on turn six and your top decking? At least a Hungry Spriggan will still attack for four the next turn. It's not very realistic to think that even a blue midrange deck would be able to continuously follow up a Manaplasm with precombat spells if Manaplasm was drawn later in the game.
To speak to Purplemuraski's data above, how many of those turn three 3-drops were actually Manaplasm? Assuming that they all were and you were facing an empty board, I'd agree that Manaplasm is slightly better than Hungry Spriggan in those cases. However, I don't think it's wise at all to assume such a thing. Your turn three play won't always be Manaplasm and your opponent won't always have an empty board to swing into. I'd much rather have a three mana 4/4 trample that dies to a -1/-1 counter than a three mana 6/6 that gets chumped by a soldier token and also dies to a -1/-1 counter.
When I play relief captain, I get exactly what I'm going to get in that moment. In the decks that lead showed, you are happy when you are getting above centaur courser with plasm.
Variance is an important part of the game and the game woukd undoubtedly be worse without it, but in formats like cube where creatures are more efficient it's hard to tolerate the further variance manaplasm brings, especially when you start getting seriously outclassed when your curve no longer matches your opponent.
The theory crafting of the million situations for manaplasm also speak to the variance of the card. The situations in the posts above can happen, the same way mulligans happen in 16 land aggro and the same way it can't fight through and the same way it dies to half of forked bolt. You gotta recognize floors, manaplasm has a real one in those decks
When I play relief captain, I get exactly what I'm going to get in that moment. [...]
in formats like cube where creatures are more efficient it's hard to tolerate the further variance manaplasm brings [...]
No, you either get the card or you don't get anything at all because Relief Captain's mana cost is as much affected by variance as Manaplasm's p/t, if not more. You can put 9 or 10 white mana sources into your deck, but that doesn't mean you will actually draw two of them. It just means you have a high chance to draw them. The same is true for Manaplasm. If you have a 16 land aggro deck it is extremely unlikely that you won't have anything (or only 2 cmc or less cards) to play on turn 3, 4 and 5. It happens, but it's not less likely than not drawing your second white mana source before turn 10. Most people play a card like Consul's Lieutenant and think that's just fine, but Manaplasm has too much variance? I'm 99.9% sure that there are far more games where Consul's Lieutenant is stuck in your hand even though you want to play it than there are games where Manaplasm can't do anything because you can't turn it into anything bigger than a Centaur Courser.
The point is, once I'm over that initial variance with Relief Captain, I'm done dealing with variance--I have my creature on the board, I have my bolster trigger, and I'm done with the variance involved in its concrete value. Manaplasm deals with similar variance, yes, but it's inverse, in that it's easier to get Manaplasm on the board but you don't always have what you want out of your manaplasm. For a 4 drop, I'm willing to deal with the variance of whether or not I get to cast the card, because that's the variance I deal with in regards to every 2XX 4 drop, and more so because I know what the performance of the Relief Captain should be. On top of that, a double cost is much easier to stomach for a 4 drop. In fact, you have a pretty solid chance in the GW deck above of having the WW on t4. The variance of it being able to be cast is completely different in that regard since my opponent playing creatures that can block the Captain isn't going to diminish whether or not I can play it on t4, whereas my opponent could play a 4/4 for 4 or something bigger and if I can't pump the Manaplasm past that (real chance of that in a deck with 4 cards that do that on their own) then the card loses value.
In terms of Consul's Lieutenant, I agree that WW is absolutely brutal. It's a card I've had success with, but is kinda awful in 50-50 two color decks. But in my experience, mono white or heavy-white creature decks aren't that uncommon so a lot of those concerns get mitigated in another way. On top of that, once it is on the board it's an incredible card, which ties back to the point about variance involved with casting the card and variance involved with its performance. I imagine you could not run Counsul's Lieutenant for the reasons you state and they are legitimate, so we agree there.
With Manaplasm, it's a bit easier to get on the table, but from there I have to make sure Im casting spells in my first main phase (I strongly disagree that playing your spells 2nd main phase is overrated, but there's a lot of information out there on why that's important and how much of a difference it can make in all your games. It goes way beyond the tricks and that's not the only way you should look at it. Like, I actually think it's a major point against manaplasm, but this is a better point to debate with google than with me.) and make sure I'm casting spells which allow the Manaplasm to get through, which while it can work is still not guaranteed and can be imagined numerous ways where that doesn't work.
I agree that Manaplasm has a high ceiling and have mentioned that a couple times, but the high ceiling exists because of stacking on multiple spells or playing higher CMC cards. This is a lot tougher to do turn-to-turn in aggro, where you will eventually run out of cards that push your manaplasm through. Yes, you can save up multiple spells to attack through, but that's again why I would hate to run green aggro as I'm being forced to 1) make a 1/1 survive turn to turn, and 2) I'm no longer on a quick clock that way. I don't think *anyone* is arguing that the ceiling isn't real, more so that you don't really know how it'll perform game to game whereas I have a pretty good idea of exactly what the other cards are going to do when they land, and that this type of inconsistency can be much more punishing when you have a much smaller window to win in.
50-50 two color aggro decks are just awful, period. You're doing something wrong if you start the game with Jackal Pup and Carnophage in the same deck. I mean, SOMETIMES I do that at "Peasant+" if I grab Blood Crypt / Mana Confluence / Dragonskull Summit all together, but otherwise, NOPE.
Like that GW sample Manaplasm deck from earlier... 15 basics, two taplands, and 22 spells at three CMC or less. Yiiiiiiikes.
edit: I still like and use "CC" cards like Consul's Lieutenant, but they're definitely pretty niche cards with a low maindeck% (among 'good' drafters, at least).
One forced draft of GW aggro isn't representative of all GW aggro decks. I also agree that it's not the cleanest deck for aggro, but the point I was attempting to get across is that there are such things as green aggro decks that aren't G/R if you build your cube to support it.
One forced draft of GW aggro isn't representative of all GW aggro decks. I also agree that it's not the cleanest deck for aggro, but the point I was attempting to get across is that there are such things as green aggro decks that aren't G/R if you build your cube to support it.
Totally I agree, but most GW aggro decks I've seen aren't much different than that one, which is why I've thought green aggro kinda sucks
If my opponent is chumping my 3 drop on turn 4, 5, or 6 I'm generally pretty happy, particularly when I have Calciderm or x/1s that aren't being blocked because of it. Past turn 6 or 7 Manaplasm becomes less consistent than Spriggan, but being bigger than 2 2/2s still makes chumps a real possibility, given you draw a 4 or a 5.
Variance is a fair reason not to play Plasm, though it's only really inconsistent when topdecking, which you can build to combat.
////////////////
Depends what you define as aggro. If my ideal realistic curve is 1-2-3-4-5 with aggressive threats instead of 1-2-3-2+2-2+3 am I aggro or just aggressive midranged?
To speak to Purplemuraski's data above, how many of those turn three 3-drops were actually Manaplasm? Assuming that they all were and you were facing an empty board, I'd agree that Manaplasm is slightly better than Hungry Spriggan in those cases.
Spriggan is certainly a better topdeck but unless a card is on the level of jade mage or duskwatch recruiter then the late game upside of my aggro early drop isn't something I'm concerned with. You've drawn probably 2/3s of the cards you'll ever draw by turn 3 in a game. So I'm fine with rating my aggro 3 drop by its merits on turn 3.
So when you say this:
Variance is an important part of the game and the game would undoubtedly be worse without it
I do doubt it. I hold pretty strongly that the variance in magic is a step or two beyond what I find acceptable. The kind of variance that is fine would include most of the stuff spoken about here, but the amount of nongames in magic (especially without casual mulligan etiquette) is really glaring.
You're doing something wrong if you start the game with Jackal Pup and Carnophage in the same deck.
Well, if you run an 8/9 spread of sources, I ran the scenario "If one of the cards in my opening hand is a land of my majority color, what are the odds that I have at least one land of my minority color in the other 6?" through a hypergeometric calculator and the answer was 77%.
That's 83% if you account for the top card of your deck on the draw (which sometimes are hands you keep).
9 sources of your majority color gives you an 86% chance of getting one in the opening 7, and bumping up to 10 only gives you an 89% chance. I've been running 9/8 in most of my decks that don't have super heavy early color requirements basically all the time nowadays for this reason: the marginal gains you get off of one more source of the primary color are smaller than the gain you get off of one more source of the secondary color.
This gets better, obviously, with etb untapped nonbasics.
I think politifact would rate your claim that this is "awful, period" as "pants on fire"
If you're gonna say that you want to avoid decks that "have super heavy early color requirements", you might not want to quote and disagree with me saying not to play aggro 1's in two different colors at the same time, then acting like you've made some HOO HAH internet argument slam dunk victory?
Like, if slamming 17 basics to get to a ~20+% opening hand fail rate is you being 'right' here...
Considering it's a 9/8 split it's better than I thought it would be. It gets up to ~86% after 2 draws, and 1 drops are pretty easy to fit into the curve. You are playing on colour 1s as well, so a 23% chance of missing your off colour 1s isn't the full story.
For any CC 3 drop you have a ~27% chance of not playing it on turn 3 with 10 sources on the draw, and a ~34% chance on the play.
Doesn't having two (or more) 1drops make it more likely to have a 1drop on turn 1? Doesn't having two (or more) 1drops make it more likely to have a T3 2drop + 1drop?
Write me an essay. Don't forget to cite your sources and provide an MLA formatted bibliography.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I think this deck would be totally fine to play with. It came from your cube, too. It doesn't have both Carnophage and Jackal Pup in it, but just imagine that the Sarcomancy is indeed a Carnophage.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/djredpeasant
Simic tempo? Is infiltrator il kor a tempo card? Is snap a tempo card? Manaplasm loves those.
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It's less about 'want' and more about variance.
Yes, ideally I'm going to curve out every game and everything is wonderful. I doubt Calibretto meant that he's looking for his Manaplasm decks to stop at CMC 3. More so, I imagine he meant that playing something that allows Manaplasm to attack through every turn can be a tall order.
Sometimes I'm not playing a 4 or 5 drops, sometimes its a two drop, or it's nothing and in those spots Manaplasm is a 1/1 for 2G and that's barely a card. Saying you're probably losing in those spots is dismissing all the variables where that's just false, cause maybe if you were attacking with a 3/3 for 2G every turn instead of Manaplasm you're getting damage through. And saying 'just play things your first main phase' can either be bad or less than ideal in a number of ways. Not saying 100% either way, and that directly ties in with the major issue with Manaplasm.
Consistency is a major part of magic, and it's even more so a factor for decks that only realistically have a number of turns to win in. Manaplasm has a high ceiling for a 3 drop, but it has a horrendous floor and there are a lot of spots where that's where you're standing and I get how that could make the ceiling still not appealing enough.
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Yes that's my point, I don't think non-gruul green aggro actually exists at peasant (nor in generic cubes, but that's for a different thread/forum...) and when people say green aggro they really mean a green midrange deck that skews towards the faster end of midrange, one that would always be the 'beat down' in mirrors. Just because a deck has 2/1s for 1 doesn't mean it's going to be an aggro deck in practice even though conventional cube wisdom makes us think that, having almost no reach in green makes those decks a bit slow outside of gruul.
And re: Manaplasm, I don't agree with the sentiment that not playing something during your first main phase on t4 means you're definitely going to lose or that you're going to continue to have cards to play as long as you have the manaplasm. Maybe I'm holding up a reactive spell or something for my opponent's EOT that would be horrendous to play during my first main phase--in those situations, Manaplasm is pretty bad whereas a 3 power 3 drop is maintaining its value through consistency. Manaplasm is better when you can/are playing cards in your first main phase, but that's just not always viable/right and can even be risky when you're not optimally playing your spells in the right window and get punished when your 1/1 for 2G gets removed in resp to that trigger or etc.
And yeah, you do have cards after turn 2 or 3 to play, but turn 4? 5? 6? How much card advantage is this aggro deck getting to not only offset the variance that is directly correlated with the gas you have for your manaplasm, but also the timing of your spells? Sometimes you continue to draw gas, but you can't guarantee that and highly unlikely at peasant that you're making up for that with card draw or selection in these aggro ('aggro') decks. Manaplasm's value in all decks 100% relies on variance, because it relies on you playing spells each turn for it to be above a 1/1 and those decks just arent going to have an abundant variety of ways to generate that beyond the ~coin-flip of land/spell that happens each draw..
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And all the talk of 'should' and 'gameplan' really underestimates how much variance there is in MTG. Players get flooded and screwed CONSTANTLY. Curves go awry. Even if you get a good land-spell mix, your spells have to be the right combo of threats and answers. The opponent's speed/board presence/'gameplan' is tremendously different across different matchups.
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/839657
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GB is better but its still more midrangey than aggressive, it's just low-curve which is my main issue. The low curve decks aren't really special without the reach, you're hoping that somehow your peasant opponent doesn't have interaction and then you hope your dorks get there. That deck would probably be a lot better if you took out the 3s and 4s and removed the quickly-outclassed 1s. You're not exactly killing them quickly unless you somehow keep the board open and none of your stuff dies, which is an incredibly tall order. I don't think either deck is really competitive. Drawing Rancor would prob win a lot of games, but that speaks more to rancor vs the power of green aggro.
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http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/839787
On the play:
1-1-3-4-4-5-2
0-2-3-4-5-3-0
0-1-3-2-2-0-4 (stuck on 3 lands)
0-2-2-3-3-3-3 (stuck on 3 lands)
0-2-3-4-2-0-4 (7 lands 6 spells)
0-2-3-3-3-4-5
0-1-3-3-2-2-4 (stuck on 3 lands)
0-2-2-4-4-5-6
1-1-1-4-4-4-2
1-2-3-3-2-1-4
On the draw:
1-2-3-4-5-1-0 (8 lands 6 spells)
0-2-2-2-3-4-5 (stuck on 2 lands)
0-2-2-2-0-0-0 (mana and colour screwed)
1-1-3-4-4-3-4
1-2-3-4-6-4-5
0-2-3-4-4-5-2
0-2-3-3-4-5-5
1-2-2-4-4-2-4
0-2-3-4-4-0-1
0-2-3-4-2-0-4
I'm in agreement with Salmo here about the variance, which is what I meant in my other post. You should always be expecting (hoping?) to play something at least the first five or so turns of the game, but that won't always be the case. And even if it is, how long can you keep that up in a non blue aggro or midrange deck with no real way to recoup the cards being cast? And even when you are able to curve perfect and use all your mana efficiently through the first six turns, not every one of those games will have a turn two or three Manaplasm. What about the times when you draw him on turn six and your top decking? At least a Hungry Spriggan will still attack for four the next turn. It's not very realistic to think that even a blue midrange deck would be able to continuously follow up a Manaplasm with precombat spells if Manaplasm was drawn later in the game.
To speak to Purplemuraski's data above, how many of those turn three 3-drops were actually Manaplasm? Assuming that they all were and you were facing an empty board, I'd agree that Manaplasm is slightly better than Hungry Spriggan in those cases. However, I don't think it's wise at all to assume such a thing. Your turn three play won't always be Manaplasm and your opponent won't always have an empty board to swing into. I'd much rather have a three mana 4/4 trample that dies to a -1/-1 counter than a three mana 6/6 that gets chumped by a soldier token and also dies to a -1/-1 counter.
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Variance is an important part of the game and the game woukd undoubtedly be worse without it, but in formats like cube where creatures are more efficient it's hard to tolerate the further variance manaplasm brings, especially when you start getting seriously outclassed when your curve no longer matches your opponent.
The theory crafting of the million situations for manaplasm also speak to the variance of the card. The situations in the posts above can happen, the same way mulligans happen in 16 land aggro and the same way it can't fight through and the same way it dies to half of forked bolt. You gotta recognize floors, manaplasm has a real one in those decks
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The point is, once I'm over that initial variance with Relief Captain, I'm done dealing with variance--I have my creature on the board, I have my bolster trigger, and I'm done with the variance involved in its concrete value. Manaplasm deals with similar variance, yes, but it's inverse, in that it's easier to get Manaplasm on the board but you don't always have what you want out of your manaplasm. For a 4 drop, I'm willing to deal with the variance of whether or not I get to cast the card, because that's the variance I deal with in regards to every 2XX 4 drop, and more so because I know what the performance of the Relief Captain should be. On top of that, a double cost is much easier to stomach for a 4 drop. In fact, you have a pretty solid chance in the GW deck above of having the WW on t4. The variance of it being able to be cast is completely different in that regard since my opponent playing creatures that can block the Captain isn't going to diminish whether or not I can play it on t4, whereas my opponent could play a 4/4 for 4 or something bigger and if I can't pump the Manaplasm past that (real chance of that in a deck with 4 cards that do that on their own) then the card loses value.
In terms of Consul's Lieutenant, I agree that WW is absolutely brutal. It's a card I've had success with, but is kinda awful in 50-50 two color decks. But in my experience, mono white or heavy-white creature decks aren't that uncommon so a lot of those concerns get mitigated in another way. On top of that, once it is on the board it's an incredible card, which ties back to the point about variance involved with casting the card and variance involved with its performance. I imagine you could not run Counsul's Lieutenant for the reasons you state and they are legitimate, so we agree there.
With Manaplasm, it's a bit easier to get on the table, but from there I have to make sure Im casting spells in my first main phase (I strongly disagree that playing your spells 2nd main phase is overrated, but there's a lot of information out there on why that's important and how much of a difference it can make in all your games. It goes way beyond the tricks and that's not the only way you should look at it. Like, I actually think it's a major point against manaplasm, but this is a better point to debate with google than with me.) and make sure I'm casting spells which allow the Manaplasm to get through, which while it can work is still not guaranteed and can be imagined numerous ways where that doesn't work.
I agree that Manaplasm has a high ceiling and have mentioned that a couple times, but the high ceiling exists because of stacking on multiple spells or playing higher CMC cards. This is a lot tougher to do turn-to-turn in aggro, where you will eventually run out of cards that push your manaplasm through. Yes, you can save up multiple spells to attack through, but that's again why I would hate to run green aggro as I'm being forced to 1) make a 1/1 survive turn to turn, and 2) I'm no longer on a quick clock that way. I don't think *anyone* is arguing that the ceiling isn't real, more so that you don't really know how it'll perform game to game whereas I have a pretty good idea of exactly what the other cards are going to do when they land, and that this type of inconsistency can be much more punishing when you have a much smaller window to win in.
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Like that GW sample Manaplasm deck from earlier... 15 basics, two taplands, and 22 spells at three CMC or less. Yiiiiiiikes.
edit: I still like and use "CC" cards like Consul's Lieutenant, but they're definitely pretty niche cards with a low maindeck% (among 'good' drafters, at least).
Totally I agree, but most GW aggro decks I've seen aren't much different than that one, which is why I've thought green aggro kinda sucks
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Variance is a fair reason not to play Plasm, though it's only really inconsistent when topdecking, which you can build to combat.
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Depends what you define as aggro. If my ideal realistic curve is 1-2-3-4-5 with aggressive threats instead of 1-2-3-2+2-2+3 am I aggro or just aggressive midranged?
Spriggan is certainly a better topdeck but unless a card is on the level of jade mage or duskwatch recruiter then the late game upside of my aggro early drop isn't something I'm concerned with. You've drawn probably 2/3s of the cards you'll ever draw by turn 3 in a game. So I'm fine with rating my aggro 3 drop by its merits on turn 3.
So when you say this:
I say that assuming it's down on turn 3 is most practical and indeed covers a majority of cases. Even if it's not the most comprehensive
I do doubt it. I hold pretty strongly that the variance in magic is a step or two beyond what I find acceptable. The kind of variance that is fine would include most of the stuff spoken about here, but the amount of nongames in magic (especially without casual mulligan etiquette) is really glaring.
Well, if you run an 8/9 spread of sources, I ran the scenario "If one of the cards in my opening hand is a land of my majority color, what are the odds that I have at least one land of my minority color in the other 6?" through a hypergeometric calculator and the answer was 77%.
That's 83% if you account for the top card of your deck on the draw (which sometimes are hands you keep).
9 sources of your majority color gives you an 86% chance of getting one in the opening 7, and bumping up to 10 only gives you an 89% chance. I've been running 9/8 in most of my decks that don't have super heavy early color requirements basically all the time nowadays for this reason: the marginal gains you get off of one more source of the primary color are smaller than the gain you get off of one more source of the secondary color.
This gets better, obviously, with etb untapped nonbasics.
I think politifact would rate your claim that this is "awful, period" as "pants on fire"
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Like, if slamming 17 basics to get to a ~20+% opening hand fail rate is you being 'right' here...
For any CC 3 drop you have a ~27% chance of not playing it on turn 3 with 10 sources on the draw, and a ~34% chance on the play.
Doesn't having two (or more) 1drops make it more likely to have a 1drop on turn 1? Doesn't having two (or more) 1drops make it more likely to have a T3 2drop + 1drop?
Write me an essay. Don't forget to cite your sources and provide an MLA formatted bibliography.
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I think this deck would be totally fine to play with. It came from your cube, too. It doesn't have both Carnophage and Jackal Pup in it, but just imagine that the Sarcomancy is indeed a Carnophage.
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/841269
And there are plenty of swappable cards in sideboard if needed.