Io, the point of the math was that the difference between skewing 10/7 vs 9/8 isn't very large.
With 10 sources, the odds of getting 0 lands of your primary color are 11%. With 9, it's 14%. So if I go 9/8 and run 1 drops in my secondary color I get to sacrifice 1/33 of my hands in order to play one drops of another color in the 4/5s of hands that have both colors.
What's the consistency that you're losing out on by running more decks that are 1 drop light? It's not like you just get to always choose between 1 drops of different colors in a pack, so you must be passing 1s rather frequently because you have this rule. Or leaving them in the sideboard.
Well
In hands with at least two lands in them, if you decked two one drops of your secondary color, you'd have a 24% chance of having one of them in your opener. 1 out of 4 games where you get to play more one drops in the opener sounds pretty good to me.
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
Running a 1 drop in your secondary color is not a comparable risk to running a CC two drop or even a 1CC three. Not even in your primary color.
If you have a consul's lieutenant or vampire nighthawk in your opener, you only have a 48% chance of having the two plains or swamps to cast it. And it's not like keeping Mountain Swamp Nighthawk +4 nonswamp cards is a reliable plan, as again with 10 black sources total in the deck you only have a 63% or 48% chance of getting that second swamp (on the draw vs play).
CC 2s and 1CC 3s are what I mean by "heavy color requirements", because percentages that are hovering south of a half are obviously not in the same ballpark as percentages hovering just south of 80%.
//
So Phitt, I think that you could still run a 1 drop in your secondary color alongside high commitment cards, so long as you have a deck with 8 sources for it. 78% of the time that it's in your opener, you get to play it. If we had stats on how much your winrate goes up with a 1 drop in aggro I'd be surprised if it didn't make up for the 22% of the time you can't cast it on 1.
In those games it'd be like having taken a mulligan, but when you finally draw your land you also draw an extra 1 mana 2/2 alongside it.
I think we just need to consider running 11 sources for our CC cards more often.
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 can't imagine that would come close to covering a majority of cases. You're evaluating the card from a best case scenario mentality point of view, which is bad, imo. If you always have Manaplasm on turn three against an empty board and can follow it up with spells that provide a reasonable pump the next three or four turns after, then yeah, Manaplasm is great and you're easily winning that game. But that's not how games of Magic typically go. You won't always have it on turn three and sometimes when you do, you won't be able to continuously cast things to pump it over the next few turns. Or maybe you can pump it, but your opponent's on tokens and has chump blockers for days. In all of these scenarios, I still think Spriggan is a better card. It doesn't require me to cast cards to get the pump and it runs over chump blockers. That's not to mention it's value as a late game top deck, which I'll agree is irrelevant when looking at it as an aggro card, but Spriggan (and Manaplasm for that matter) isn't just an aggro card the way that Jackal Pup is. It's good in that shell and it's good in a midgrange shell where you're probably going to see the top 20 or so cards of your deck in any given game.
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.
For the most part, I agree with this. Magic's variance is probably what causes the most salt in the game. It's because of this that my group has a free mulligans house rule. Losing because you had to mull to five after seeing two one land hands feels real bad.
I've been doing quite a few drafts over the last few days and have noticed that flying token generators such as Battle Screech or Migratory Route seem like there aren't many good answers to them. They can stop an aggressive deck in it's tracks with blockers or be a hard to deal with threat against a control deck. So much so, that it seems like they are generally starting to dominate a little bit just in terms of results. Has anyone else found something like this to be true, if so were you able to find an easy fix? I don't want to take them out because they are such key cards to some strategies, I just wish there was a bit more counter play.
Calibretto, all I meant was that the majority of cases should involve having manaplasm in your hand by the time turn 3 rolls around. Assuming most games are effectively over by turn 8 or so.
By turn 3 you have seen 9 or 10 cards, and by turn 8 you've seen 14-15 cards.
/
Petyr, I am pretty sure that white x tokens are the best strategy in my cube, so I guess I haven't found a direct answer.
Using brute force, you could look into using more pyroclasm type effects and more pingers. Or trophy hunter.
You could fight fire with fire by including more token generators in fother colors. This could help keep the white generators from generating card advantage over time.
More bounce attached to a body a la riftwing cloudskate.
More tramplers
Shadow/unblockable creatures
And First strikers don't trade down.
And removing aggressive creatures with one toughness where possible, I suppose.
This is just a general list of ideas, I dont know how much these would work individually
Looking at the first seven turns it covers 70-80% of cases, and assuming the worse case scenario isn't good either. Starting to bleed creatures against an aggressive deck on turn 4 is game losing. Lets say I curve Manaplasm into Blastoderm, how long can they chump for before they run out of creatures? Sure Blastoderm dies in a few turns and Manaplasm becomes less consistent, but I'm double abyssing my opponent for 2 or 3 turns. If your opponent is on 23 token producers Spriggan is better than Plasm, but the vast majority of decks are not tokens. It's also entirely possible to give Manaplasm trample.
Uhh, what kind of midranged decks are you playing where you run out of cards to play? If you play any kind of value 5 or 6 drop Manaplasm gets to 6/6 or 7/7 for a while, which is way more relevant than a 4/4 trampler, especially in the later phases of the game. If you have a higher curve with value spells Manaplasm is going to be better than Hungry Spriggan.
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Split damage spells, sweepers, Storm Crow, and pressuring the opponent can all deal with the tokens. It definitely feels bad to lose to Lingering Souls in 5 turns with the ground stalled, but you need to be able to attack or defend, and if you can't you lose, which isn't different to any other match-up. I've definitely won games off solely 1/1 fliers, but I've also curved Lingering Souls + flashback into Migratory Route and lost to a single Aerial Responder and some random ground stuff. A few incidental things like Tooth Collector and some mid sized fliers might help tone it down.
Calibretto, all I meant was that the majority of cases should involve having manaplasm in your hand by the time turn 3 rolls around. Assuming most games are effectively over by turn 8 or so.
By turn 3 you have seen 9 or 10 cards, and by turn 8 you've seen 14-15 cards.
Right, and my point was that there's no reason to believe you'll have seen any one random specific card by turn three.
Looking at the first seven turns it covers 70-80% of cases, and assuming the worse case scenario isn't good either. Starting to bleed creatures against an aggressive deck on turn 4 is game losing. Lets say I curve Manaplasm into Blastoderm, how long can they chump for before they run out of creatures? Sure Blastoderm dies in a few turns and Manaplasm becomes less consistent, but I'm double abyssing my opponent for 2 or 3 turns. If your opponent is on 23 token producers Spriggan is better than Plasm, but the vast majority of decks are not tokens. It's also entirely possible to give Manaplasm trample.
But you're not double Abyss'ing your opponent for two or three turns unless you're following Blastoderm with another big drop and following that one with yet another one. In your example you curve Manaplasm into Blastoderm, attack with your 5/5 'plasm and they chump with a random 1/1. The next turn what happens? You play another 4-5 drop? If your argument is how long can they keep chumping before they run out of creatures, my rebuttal is how long can you keep playing creatures? If you're assuming you're playing a new creature every turn from turn three forward, you're probably doing well no matter what your turn three creature was.
Uhh, what kind of midranged decks are you playing where you run out of cards to play? If you play any kind of value 5 or 6 drop Manaplasm gets to 6/6 or 7/7 for a while, which is way more relevant than a 4/4 trampler, especially in the later phases of the game. If you have a higher curve with value spells Manaplasm is going to be better than Hungry Spriggan.
Midrange decks can run out of cards to cast pretty easily if they don't have a way to recoup the cards already played. A Simic midrange deck can probably keep cards in its hand, but a Selesnya or Golgari midrange deck could easily be out of cards by turn five or six just by playing lands and spells as they're drawn. Not only that, but sometimes cards just get stranded in your hand. Your turn four play is Nekrataal, but your opponent has no targetable creatures, for example.
I'm not arguing that Manaplasm can't get in for some big damage. Obviously, you can follow it up with a few big creatures in a row and keep it as a 5/5 or bigger for a few turns. I just don't think it's going to be able to regularly do that. And again, if you're following your three drop with three or four turns worth of 4, 5, and 6 drops, your three drop could have just as well have been Wolfir Avenger and you'd still be doing well in that scenario.
The more I think about it Manaplasm isn't that much better than a vanilla 4/4 in a good 50% of my games, it's just fun and makes for good stories so my playgroup would be mad if I tried to replace it.
Flying tokens are really strong, no doubt. Most cubes that include the full crew of Lingering Souls, Battle Screech, Spectral Procession, and the like usually have W/x flyers as a dominant strat. The only sure-fire counter to token decks is board clears. I have 4 black and 5 red board clears and still sometimes feel like slower creatureless strategies need the help. The downside with adding board clears is that they stuff aggro decks, which traditionally need help in cube to begin with.
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Of turns 5, 6 or 7 you need to spend 4 mana twice, which isn't unreasonable. It's about 50% for the GW deck, but adding in draw or raising the curve should get you to ~65%. This is also asking for your 3 drop to be chumped 3 times, which is kind of silly that it's even this high.
A Manaplasm followed by Harmonize, Eternal Witness, Deadwood Treefolk, Palace Jailer, Custodi Squire, Baloth Null, Read the Bones, Wander in Death, etc. isn't going to be small. It's not super difficult to get value spells at peasant, and you don't need a ton of them considering they chain together. This may be cube or player specific, but I only really run out of things to do in aggro and occasionally control, but not really midranged.
Maybe this is just me playing a ton of UG value aggro and not a lot of other Gx aggro variants, but I've always been happy with a Plasm on 3 whereas all other aggressive green 3s feel like they're just filling the curve. When your opponent's deck, whether or not you would win anyways, and what is winning becomes the focal points there isn't much left you can reasonably theorize, especially with variance involved. Test it or don't test it; I know I'm probably including Spriggan when I get around to it.
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Smoldering Werewolf has always really impressed me. The front side is solid to great, and, while it's hard to flip into open mana, the backside gives a ton of on board damage.
The more I think about it Manaplasm isn't that much better than a vanilla 4/4 in a good 50% of my games, it's just fun and makes for good stories so my playgroup would be mad if I tried to replace it.
See, now this is an argument to keep Manaplasm that I can get behind.
Maybe this is just me playing a ton of UG value aggro and not a lot of other Gx aggro variants, but I've always been happy with a Plasm on 3 whereas all other aggressive green 3s feel like they're just filling the curve. When your opponent's deck, whether or not you would win anyways, and what is winning becomes the focal points there isn't much left you can reasonably theorize, especially with variance involved. Test it or don't test it; I know I'm probably including Spriggan when I get around to it.
To be fair, I'm not running either Manaplasm or Spriggan because I didn't feel either of them made the cut at 360. Also, I can't believe we've had a week long discussion about how good (or bad) Manaplasm can be. If it's working for you and your group, then that's great. It just seems like a card with too much variance for my tastes.
The more I think about it Manaplasm isn't that much better than a vanilla 4/4 in a good 50% of my games, it's just fun and makes for good stories so my playgroup would be mad if I tried to replace it.
Flying tokens are really strong, no doubt. Most cubes that include the full crew of Lingering Souls, Battle Screech, Spectral Procession, and the like usually have W/x flyers as a dominant strat. The only sure-fire counter to token decks is board clears. I have 4 black and 5 red board clears and still sometimes feel like slower creatureless strategies need the help. The downside with adding board clears is that they stuff aggro decks, which traditionally need help in cube to begin with.
If you're desperate you can always run Izzet Staticaster. Or just play some of the many solid token makers rather than all the best ones.
Calibretto
Sure you wont have manaplasm in most games
But in most games where you DO see manaplasm, it'll be by turn 3. Hence these are the games that matter.
Are you saying that the card is worse because it doesn't tutor itself to your hand? I don't understand the issue you're having with me talking about the majority of games that it shows up.
In about 2/3s of games with the card being one of the cards you draw, it'll show up by turn 3.
Calibretto
Sure you wont have manaplasm in most games
But in most games where you DO see manaplasm, it'll be by turn 3. Hence these are the games that matter.
Are you saying that the card is worse because it doesn't tutor itself to your hand? I don't understand the issue you're having with me talking about the majority of games that it shows up.
I think maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're saying. If you're looking at the majority of games where it happens to be one of the ten random cards you see by turn three, and saying that in those games the card is typically good, then I can't really argue that. I've not played the card, I just think it has too much variance for my tastes. But if you're saying that when you see Manaplasm, it will be by turn three a majority of the time, that's simply not true. There's only like a 12% chance that you'll see any one specific card in your opening hand and a 16% chance you'll see any one specific card by turn three. Obviously you're seeing ten random cards, but there's no math that can support the claim that any of those cards will be Manaplasm specifically by turn three or that every time you do see Manaplasm it will be on or before turn three. You're just as likely for any of those ten random cards to be Manaplasm as you are for them to be any of the other 23 one-ofs in your deck.
Calibretto
Sure you wont have manaplasm in most games
But in most games where you DO see manaplasm, it'll be by turn 3. Hence these are the games that matter.
Are you saying that the card is worse because it doesn't tutor itself to your hand? I don't understand the issue you're having with me talking about the majority of games that it shows up.
I think maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're saying. If you're looking at the majority of games where it happens to be one of the ten random cards you see by turn three, and saying that in those games the card is typically good, then I can't really argue that. I've not played the card, I just think it has too much variance for my tastes. But if you're saying that when you see Manaplasm, it will be by turn three a majority of the time, that's simply not true. There's only like a 12% chance that you'll see any one specific card in your opening hand and a 16% chance you'll see any one specific card by turn three. Obviously you're seeing ten random cards, but there's no math that can support the claim that any of those cards will be Manaplasm specifically by turn three or that every time you do see Manaplasm it will be on or before turn three. You're just as likely for any of those ten random cards to be Manaplasm as you are for them to be any of the other 23 one-ofs in your deck.
He's not saying that in most games you will see Manaplasm by turn 3. He's saying that in games where you do see manaplasm, more often than not you will see it by turn three. This is just a function of how many cards you see before turn 3 in the typical game (9-10) versus how many cards you see between turn 4 and the end of the game (4-6?).
As an example: If you play 1000 games with manaplasm, most likely you will have it by turn 3 around 250 times, and you will draw it after turn 3 around 125 times. In 625 games you never saw manaplasm at all, so it never mattered that it was a bad top-deck.
Yes homarid, that is what I am saying. I have no idea why calibretto is talking about a card in a context where it does not get drawn.
I think we had a similar argument like 4 years ago about loxodon warhammer and disenchant, and how games where you don't draw warhammer make warhammer not the OP menace I was probably trying to paint it as.
I've had a lot of arguments over the years, but I sorta want to check.
"Let me start by saying that the games where you don't draw warhammer don't count when we talk about how good it is. Obviously. I don't even know how Calibretto counted that as an argument."
-Me, uh, not being confrontational
"It's just as fair to mention the probability of drawing/not drawing Warhammer as it is to mention the probability of drawing/not drawing Naturalize. One is just as relevant as the other."
-Cali
So we've been having this argument for over half a decade.
Also your math at the end cali is waaay off (calculating from a 60 card deck, not a 40 card deck). But that's besides the point.
Having the card in my opening 9-10 is not a best case scenario. It's about 2/3s of all the cards I can expect to see in a random game and therefore pretty much the definition of an average case scenario.
But if you're saying that when you see Manaplasm, it will be by turn three a majority of the time, that's simply not true.... Obviously you're seeing ten random cards, but there's no math that can support the claim that any of those cards will be Manaplasm specifically by turn three or that every time you do see Manaplasm it will be on or before turn three. You're just as likely for any of those ten random cards to be Manaplasm as you are for them to be any of the other 23 one-ofs in your deck.
You're mixing up two distinct sets of probability here. "Drawing manaplasm at all by turn 3" and "If you draw manaplasm at all in the game, do you usually draw it by turn 3".
I think basically the same argument was had over Library of Alexandria too. It's OP in your opening hand. It's a horrible topdeck when you have far from 7 cards. Most games where you see it it will be in your opening hand.
Simulate the scenario. You have two lands in play, and we'll call this turn A.
On turn A, you play "two mana divination", and then count how far into the deck you get by your next draw phase. You should have access to the third card down by turn B. And the fourth card down by turn C.
If you played sylvan library on turn A, then you have access to.. The third card of your library on turn B. And the fourth card if your library by turn C.
When I say this card isn't op at a baseline, that's what I mean.
Even if you pay life, it isnt until the turn afterwards that you get to be deeper into your deck.
Comparing to night's whisper, I don't know if "1G: draw two cards next turn, draw an additional card the turn after, pay 4 life" is over powered. Good, sure, but not OP.
Now once you add shuffle effects, you're golden. Obviously green has the most shuffle effects, but it can still be slim pickings for them.
So we've been having this argument for over half a decade.
Leelue - I just want to say it's good to be back in the world of peasant with you!
I had a rebuttal in my head as I was reading through, but since we've been doing this same back and forth for six years, I'm sure it'll come up again some other time.
Some people have reported Monument is busted, but I haven't tried it. I could see it, has a high ceiling, but also can be a dead draw and needs some other things to go right to get a Hordeling Outburst worth of value out of it
On a recent draft, I had the Oketra's Monument out, and on turn 4 managed to curve into a white 3-drop (costing 1 less), create a 1/1, surge-cast Reckless Bushwhacker, creating another 1/1. All creatures get +1/+0 and haste, hit you for: like a billion
Of course this is a narrow interaction between two cards, but it's a pretty good one.
With 10 sources, the odds of getting 0 lands of your primary color are 11%. With 9, it's 14%. So if I go 9/8 and run 1 drops in my secondary color I get to sacrifice 1/33 of my hands in order to play one drops of another color in the 4/5s of hands that have both colors.
What's the consistency that you're losing out on by running more decks that are 1 drop light? It's not like you just get to always choose between 1 drops of different colors in a pack, so you must be passing 1s rather frequently because you have this rule. Or leaving them in the sideboard.
Well
In hands with at least two lands in them, if you decked two one drops of your secondary color, you'd have a 24% chance of having one of them in your opener. 1 out of 4 games where you get to play more one drops in the opener sounds pretty good to me.
Running a 1 drop in your secondary color is not a comparable risk to running a CC two drop or even a 1CC three. Not even in your primary color.
If you have a consul's lieutenant or vampire nighthawk in your opener, you only have a 48% chance of having the two plains or swamps to cast it. And it's not like keeping Mountain Swamp Nighthawk +4 nonswamp cards is a reliable plan, as again with 10 black sources total in the deck you only have a 63% or 48% chance of getting that second swamp (on the draw vs play).
CC 2s and 1CC 3s are what I mean by "heavy color requirements", because percentages that are hovering south of a half are obviously not in the same ballpark as percentages hovering just south of 80%.
//
So Phitt, I think that you could still run a 1 drop in your secondary color alongside high commitment cards, so long as you have a deck with 8 sources for it. 78% of the time that it's in your opener, you get to play it. If we had stats on how much your winrate goes up with a 1 drop in aggro I'd be surprised if it didn't make up for the 22% of the time you can't cast it on 1.
In those games it'd be like having taken a mulligan, but when you finally draw your land you also draw an extra 1 mana 2/2 alongside it.
I think we just need to consider running 11 sources for our CC cards more often.
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
I can't imagine that would come close to covering a majority of cases. You're evaluating the card from a best case scenario mentality point of view, which is bad, imo. If you always have Manaplasm on turn three against an empty board and can follow it up with spells that provide a reasonable pump the next three or four turns after, then yeah, Manaplasm is great and you're easily winning that game. But that's not how games of Magic typically go. You won't always have it on turn three and sometimes when you do, you won't be able to continuously cast things to pump it over the next few turns. Or maybe you can pump it, but your opponent's on tokens and has chump blockers for days. In all of these scenarios, I still think Spriggan is a better card. It doesn't require me to cast cards to get the pump and it runs over chump blockers. That's not to mention it's value as a late game top deck, which I'll agree is irrelevant when looking at it as an aggro card, but Spriggan (and Manaplasm for that matter) isn't just an aggro card the way that Jackal Pup is. It's good in that shell and it's good in a midgrange shell where you're probably going to see the top 20 or so cards of your deck in any given game.
For the most part, I agree with this. Magic's variance is probably what causes the most salt in the game. It's because of this that my group has a free mulligans house rule. Losing because you had to mull to five after seeing two one land hands feels real bad.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/djredpeasant
By turn 3 you have seen 9 or 10 cards, and by turn 8 you've seen 14-15 cards.
/
Petyr, I am pretty sure that white x tokens are the best strategy in my cube, so I guess I haven't found a direct answer.
Using brute force, you could look into using more pyroclasm type effects and more pingers. Or trophy hunter.
You could fight fire with fire by including more token generators in fother colors. This could help keep the white generators from generating card advantage over time.
More bounce attached to a body a la riftwing cloudskate.
More tramplers
Shadow/unblockable creatures
And First strikers don't trade down.
And removing aggressive creatures with one toughness where possible, I suppose.
This is just a general list of ideas, I dont know how much these would work individually
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
Uhh, what kind of midranged decks are you playing where you run out of cards to play? If you play any kind of value 5 or 6 drop Manaplasm gets to 6/6 or 7/7 for a while, which is way more relevant than a 4/4 trampler, especially in the later phases of the game. If you have a higher curve with value spells Manaplasm is going to be better than Hungry Spriggan.
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Split damage spells, sweepers, Storm Crow, and pressuring the opponent can all deal with the tokens. It definitely feels bad to lose to Lingering Souls in 5 turns with the ground stalled, but you need to be able to attack or defend, and if you can't you lose, which isn't different to any other match-up. I've definitely won games off solely 1/1 fliers, but I've also curved Lingering Souls + flashback into Migratory Route and lost to a single Aerial Responder and some random ground stuff. A few incidental things like Tooth Collector and some mid sized fliers might help tone it down.
Right, and my point was that there's no reason to believe you'll have seen any one random specific card by turn three.
But you're not double Abyss'ing your opponent for two or three turns unless you're following Blastoderm with another big drop and following that one with yet another one. In your example you curve Manaplasm into Blastoderm, attack with your 5/5 'plasm and they chump with a random 1/1. The next turn what happens? You play another 4-5 drop? If your argument is how long can they keep chumping before they run out of creatures, my rebuttal is how long can you keep playing creatures? If you're assuming you're playing a new creature every turn from turn three forward, you're probably doing well no matter what your turn three creature was.
Midrange decks can run out of cards to cast pretty easily if they don't have a way to recoup the cards already played. A Simic midrange deck can probably keep cards in its hand, but a Selesnya or Golgari midrange deck could easily be out of cards by turn five or six just by playing lands and spells as they're drawn. Not only that, but sometimes cards just get stranded in your hand. Your turn four play is Nekrataal, but your opponent has no targetable creatures, for example.
I'm not arguing that Manaplasm can't get in for some big damage. Obviously, you can follow it up with a few big creatures in a row and keep it as a 5/5 or bigger for a few turns. I just don't think it's going to be able to regularly do that. And again, if you're following your three drop with three or four turns worth of 4, 5, and 6 drops, your three drop could have just as well have been Wolfir Avenger and you'd still be doing well in that scenario.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Flying tokens are really strong, no doubt. Most cubes that include the full crew of Lingering Souls, Battle Screech, Spectral Procession, and the like usually have W/x flyers as a dominant strat. The only sure-fire counter to token decks is board clears. I have 4 black and 5 red board clears and still sometimes feel like slower creatureless strategies need the help. The downside with adding board clears is that they stuff aggro decks, which traditionally need help in cube to begin with.
Warning: Not for the durdly-hearted!
A Manaplasm followed by Harmonize, Eternal Witness, Deadwood Treefolk, Palace Jailer, Custodi Squire, Baloth Null, Read the Bones, Wander in Death, etc. isn't going to be small. It's not super difficult to get value spells at peasant, and you don't need a ton of them considering they chain together. This may be cube or player specific, but I only really run out of things to do in aggro and occasionally control, but not really midranged.
Maybe this is just me playing a ton of UG value aggro and not a lot of other Gx aggro variants, but I've always been happy with a Plasm on 3 whereas all other aggressive green 3s feel like they're just filling the curve. When your opponent's deck, whether or not you would win anyways, and what is winning becomes the focal points there isn't much left you can reasonably theorize, especially with variance involved. Test it or don't test it; I know I'm probably including Spriggan when I get around to it.
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Smoldering Werewolf has always really impressed me. The front side is solid to great, and, while it's hard to flip into open mana, the backside gives a ton of on board damage.
See, now this is an argument to keep Manaplasm that I can get behind.
To be fair, I'm not running either Manaplasm or Spriggan because I didn't feel either of them made the cut at 360. Also, I can't believe we've had a week long discussion about how good (or bad) Manaplasm can be. If it's working for you and your group, then that's great. It just seems like a card with too much variance for my tastes.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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If you're desperate you can always run Izzet Staticaster. Or just play some of the many solid token makers rather than all the best ones.
My C/Ube on Cube Cobra
Sure you wont have manaplasm in most games
But in most games where you DO see manaplasm, it'll be by turn 3. Hence these are the games that matter.
Are you saying that the card is worse because it doesn't tutor itself to your hand? I don't understand the issue you're having with me talking about the majority of games that it shows up.
In about 2/3s of games with the card being one of the cards you draw, it'll show up by turn 3.
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
I think maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're saying. If you're looking at the majority of games where it happens to be one of the ten random cards you see by turn three, and saying that in those games the card is typically good, then I can't really argue that. I've not played the card, I just think it has too much variance for my tastes. But if you're saying that when you see Manaplasm, it will be by turn three a majority of the time, that's simply not true. There's only like a 12% chance that you'll see any one specific card in your opening hand and a 16% chance you'll see any one specific card by turn three. Obviously you're seeing ten random cards, but there's no math that can support the claim that any of those cards will be Manaplasm specifically by turn three or that every time you do see Manaplasm it will be on or before turn three. You're just as likely for any of those ten random cards to be Manaplasm as you are for them to be any of the other 23 one-ofs in your deck.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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He's not saying that in most games you will see Manaplasm by turn 3. He's saying that in games where you do see manaplasm, more often than not you will see it by turn three. This is just a function of how many cards you see before turn 3 in the typical game (9-10) versus how many cards you see between turn 4 and the end of the game (4-6?).
As an example: If you play 1000 games with manaplasm, most likely you will have it by turn 3 around 250 times, and you will draw it after turn 3 around 125 times. In 625 games you never saw manaplasm at all, so it never mattered that it was a bad top-deck.
I like this way of thinking.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
I think we had a similar argument like 4 years ago about loxodon warhammer and disenchant, and how games where you don't draw warhammer make warhammer not the OP menace I was probably trying to paint it as.
I've had a lot of arguments over the years, but I sorta want to check.
EDIT: Yeah, wow, it was me and him, but six years ago to the day.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/pauper-peasant-discussion/193990-the-peasant-cube-discussion-thread-c-u?page=14#c346
"Let me start by saying that the games where you don't draw warhammer don't count when we talk about how good it is. Obviously. I don't even know how Calibretto counted that as an argument."
-Me, uh, not being confrontational
"It's just as fair to mention the probability of drawing/not drawing Warhammer as it is to mention the probability of drawing/not drawing Naturalize. One is just as relevant as the other."
-Cali
So we've been having this argument for over half a decade.
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
Having the card in my opening 9-10 is not a best case scenario. It's about 2/3s of all the cards I can expect to see in a random game and therefore pretty much the definition of an average case scenario.
You're mixing up two distinct sets of probability here. "Drawing manaplasm at all by turn 3" and "If you draw manaplasm at all in the game, do you usually draw it by turn 3".
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
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Simulate the scenario. You have two lands in play, and we'll call this turn A.
On turn A, you play "two mana divination", and then count how far into the deck you get by your next draw phase. You should have access to the third card down by turn B. And the fourth card down by turn C.
If you played sylvan library on turn A, then you have access to.. The third card of your library on turn B. And the fourth card if your library by turn C.
When I say this card isn't op at a baseline, that's what I mean.
Even if you pay life, it isnt until the turn afterwards that you get to be deeper into your deck.
Comparing to night's whisper, I don't know if "1G: draw two cards next turn, draw an additional card the turn after, pay 4 life" is over powered. Good, sure, but not OP.
Now once you add shuffle effects, you're golden. Obviously green has the most shuffle effects, but it can still be slim pickings for them.
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
Leelue - I just want to say it's good to be back in the world of peasant with you!
I had a rebuttal in my head as I was reading through, but since we've been doing this same back and forth for six years, I'm sure it'll come up again some other time.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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On a recent draft, I had the Oketra's Monument out, and on turn 4 managed to curve into a white 3-drop (costing 1 less), create a 1/1, surge-cast Reckless Bushwhacker, creating another 1/1. All creatures get +1/+0 and haste, hit you for: like a billion
Of course this is a narrow interaction between two cards, but it's a pretty good one.
My Peasant Cube - CubeCobra