I got pretty damn excited when I saw the Prophet of Kruphix. It's no Leyline or Seedborn Muse, but it hits the exact things this deck cares about and does it in a single card. My only trouble has been figuring out what to cut for it!
mld is fine as long as you are casting it to win the game, not because you are behind and you don't want to lose now. I don't like it when you are just slowing the game down to a crawl.
Why would I cast Cataclysm when I'm ahead? The whole reason I'd use that card is to bring me back into the game.
If I'm suddenly not allowed to do things that might bring me back from behind, I might as well scoop at the first sign of adversity.
There's a lot of stuff from the Legends set (and some from earlier) that are vanilla creatures that just happened to have the Legendary tag put on them. I'm really glad they don't design like that anymore.
The deck instantly loses if Iona or Blightsteel get bribery'd, which is just awful. It doesn't matter if they only cost 6, you should never play a creature that will cause you to lose if you lose control of it. You need to have a ready answer for facing every single one of your creatures.
In my 6 land example how does pile shuffle have no effect on it? Pile breaks the cards riffle wouldn't.
You really don't understand how this works, do you? The two things you seem to have trouble with are:
1: A deck that has been riffled 5-6 times is sufficiently random. This has been shown empirically. Please refer to http://scholar.google.com for more information.
2: A pile shuffle on a deck that is random results in a deck that is equally random. No more, no less, and with the same probability of having land stacks as it had before.
Already knowing that even if you shuffle additional times for me, odds of receiving that same land clump are far less than simply stuffing the 9 on top and riffling away.
No, the odds are unchanged. This is the very part you don't seem to understand. If you put the lands on top and you riffle 5 times, the deck (including the lands) has been randomized.
Now, according to WotC, having shuffled after, and then presented to you for shuffling, its not cheating, until they oust pile shuffling at events all together, thus damning all us pile shufflers.
Of course, if I get to shuffle your deck and actually make it random (meaning the top card can remain the top card), the cheating element is removed. But in that case, you need not have pile shuffled at all in the first place -- in fact, it doesn't matter at all what the deck looked like in the first place. You might as well go rub that lucky rabbit's foot, it'll have the same effect.
You finish a game. You have 9 lands out. You add those to the pile, and rifle 5 times. The rifle left 6 of those lands together, with a new card or two between. Is it your desired intent that your opponents rifle left him 6 lands lumped together, losing to mana flood or lack of lands should they be on the bottom?
Thats a poor shuffle. That is not the intent behind shuffling your deck. Its the exact opposite of the intent.
In your eyes, making every card move is cheating. Should I play 60 card pickup off the floor, I made every card move and therefore by your definition its also cheating.
60 card pickup is not guaranteed to move the position of every card in the deck, so no, it is not cheating.
In your example, if five riffles left 6 lands together -- tough deal. Randomization doesn't mean you're going to get a great draw, it's going to mean you get a random draw. My desired intent is that an opponent gets a random draw. A random draw can include mana flood.
A pile shuffle on an already-randomized deck has the same effect as rubbing a lucky rabbit's foot or some other voodoo. That is to say: none.
It would seem unless I shuffle poorly and keep 6 lands together and screw myself into a loss, I am cheating.
It's abundantly clear that you do not understand what a "poor" shuffle is, nor what it means for the deck to be random.
And yes, moving every card is my intent, desire and action. Even if some don't like it, it would be really difficult to argue that I didn't shuffle the living christ out of my deck at an event or that I was stacking in a predetermined order regardless
And this, quite simply, is where you are going wrong. When you randomize your deck, some cards can get left where they are. What was the top card can once again be the top card. That is part of randomization, and if you are attempting to make that not the case, you are plain and simply cheating. It might be crappy cheating, but it's still cheating.
The way you described it, you want to "have no knowledge of your draw" -- but, again with the way you described it, you do have knowledge of your draw. If you move every card in the deck so that the top card can no longer be the top card, you are 100% sure that you will not draw that card -- AKA, you have knowledge of your draw.
When online shuffles a deck in random order, does it leave the top card top, bottom cards bottom and virtually stick cards together? No, it moves every card in the deck when it generates, outside of chance a (copy of) a card is in the same location.
Yes, it can do this. Leaving a card in the same place is a potential outcome. If it is not a potential outcome, the outcome is not sufficiently random. Randomization does not mean "everything gets moved".
The pile shuffle cures the non-random elements of the riffle: cards on top staying on the top, cards on bottom staying on the bottom, and sleeves stuck together traveling together. Side swipes ensure cards on top and bottom move as well.
Only then, can you achieve the ultimate shuffle, with every card moved.
I don't think you quite get it. There are no "non-random elements" of the riffle! Experimentally, 5-6 riffle shuffles achieves secure randomization. Those "non-random" elements that you are talking about are exactly what makes the riffle random in the first place. If those elements did not exist, a riffle shuffle would NOT be random and a number of riffles (8 for when you leave the top card on top) would actually return the deck to the same position it was in when you started shuffling.
In this scenario the information and order is known before going into the pile shuffle.
If information and order is unknown before pile shuffling, then by definition the deck is already randomized and the pile shuffle is pointless.
edit: Well, not exactly of course (you could still theoretically gain ordering information by knowing, say, the top 5 cards), but for the purposes of discussing pile shuffling that does not change things.
It distributes all cards to different places in the deck from where they were previously. It too is perfectly capable of drawing a good land hand, or a bad land hand. It too can statistically put 4 of a kind together just like the riffle can.
The only way it would ever matter to your opponent, is if you had knowledge of the card distribution going into the piles and thus the outcome was a known order. In example, picking up all your lands after a game, and starting the piles with one land each, with no shuffling afterwards.
And really, if theres shuffle afterwards too, nobody should care, provided they are in under the 3 minutes.
Distributing all cards to different places from where they were previously is not good enough and not the same thing as randomization. If it was good enough, simply cutting the deck would be sufficient, as it satisfies the same criteria.
No, I won't care if my opponent pile shuffles, provided they riffle shuffle 5-6 times afterward (the necessary amount for complete randomization). They could also alphabetize their deck beforehand and then riffle shuffle 5-6 times and I'd be cool with that.
Others believe that pile shuffle is insufficient. This is a game of statistics. A riffle shuffle is no different. If you pile shuffled using 2 piles, your making a riffle shuffle. If you pile shuffle 4 piles, your riffling twice. The difference is riffle sometimes keeps 2-3 cards together in a clump, whereas pile does not. IMHO pile is more efficient at sufficiently randomizing.
That "2-3 cards together in a clump" is the entire thing that makes a riffle shuffle random in the first place. Your assertion is completely wrong -- pile shuffling is not "more efficient" at randomizing, it doesn't randomize at all.
Some of my pet peeves: Drawing before untapping; tapping a creature to declare it as a blocker; and using Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokémon references during the game.
Are you for real? Telling people that they activated my trap card! when I use Ravenous Trap is the most fun part of playing that card.
Why would I cast Cataclysm when I'm ahead? The whole reason I'd use that card is to bring me back into the game.
If I'm suddenly not allowed to do things that might bring me back from behind, I might as well scoop at the first sign of adversity.
There is almost no reason to run Akroma, Angel of Wrath without Oath of Druids.
You really don't understand how this works, do you? The two things you seem to have trouble with are:
1: A deck that has been riffled 5-6 times is sufficiently random. This has been shown empirically. Please refer to http://scholar.google.com for more information.
2: A pile shuffle on a deck that is random results in a deck that is equally random. No more, no less, and with the same probability of having land stacks as it had before.
No, the odds are unchanged. This is the very part you don't seem to understand. If you put the lands on top and you riffle 5 times, the deck (including the lands) has been randomized.
Of course, if I get to shuffle your deck and actually make it random (meaning the top card can remain the top card), the cheating element is removed. But in that case, you need not have pile shuffled at all in the first place -- in fact, it doesn't matter at all what the deck looked like in the first place. You might as well go rub that lucky rabbit's foot, it'll have the same effect.
60 card pickup is not guaranteed to move the position of every card in the deck, so no, it is not cheating.
In your example, if five riffles left 6 lands together -- tough deal. Randomization doesn't mean you're going to get a great draw, it's going to mean you get a random draw. My desired intent is that an opponent gets a random draw. A random draw can include mana flood.
A pile shuffle on an already-randomized deck has the same effect as rubbing a lucky rabbit's foot or some other voodoo. That is to say: none.
It's abundantly clear that you do not understand what a "poor" shuffle is, nor what it means for the deck to be random.
And this, quite simply, is where you are going wrong. When you randomize your deck, some cards can get left where they are. What was the top card can once again be the top card. That is part of randomization, and if you are attempting to make that not the case, you are plain and simply cheating. It might be crappy cheating, but it's still cheating.
The way you described it, you want to "have no knowledge of your draw" -- but, again with the way you described it, you do have knowledge of your draw. If you move every card in the deck so that the top card can no longer be the top card, you are 100% sure that you will not draw that card -- AKA, you have knowledge of your draw.
Yes, it can do this. Leaving a card in the same place is a potential outcome. If it is not a potential outcome, the outcome is not sufficiently random. Randomization does not mean "everything gets moved".
I don't think you quite get it. There are no "non-random elements" of the riffle! Experimentally, 5-6 riffle shuffles achieves secure randomization. Those "non-random" elements that you are talking about are exactly what makes the riffle random in the first place. If those elements did not exist, a riffle shuffle would NOT be random and a number of riffles (8 for when you leave the top card on top) would actually return the deck to the same position it was in when you started shuffling.
If information and order is unknown before pile shuffling, then by definition the deck is already randomized and the pile shuffle is pointless.
edit: Well, not exactly of course (you could still theoretically gain ordering information by knowing, say, the top 5 cards), but for the purposes of discussing pile shuffling that does not change things.
Distributing all cards to different places from where they were previously is not good enough and not the same thing as randomization. If it was good enough, simply cutting the deck would be sufficient, as it satisfies the same criteria.
No, I won't care if my opponent pile shuffles, provided they riffle shuffle 5-6 times afterward (the necessary amount for complete randomization). They could also alphabetize their deck beforehand and then riffle shuffle 5-6 times and I'd be cool with that.
That "2-3 cards together in a clump" is the entire thing that makes a riffle shuffle random in the first place. Your assertion is completely wrong -- pile shuffling is not "more efficient" at randomizing, it doesn't randomize at all.
Are you for real? Telling people that they activated my trap card! when I use Ravenous Trap is the most fun part of playing that card.