Finally a solid Wish target when you've got 2 mana, Burning Wish, and LED!
Wow! Hi. I didn't even realize there was a merge. I thought MTGS was dead! My bad everyone. I'll get to updating the primer, and good call on this card; it seems to be pulling its weight big time on MTGO.
Undergrowth — When Lotleth Giant enters the battlefield, it deals 1 damage to target opponent for each creature card in your graveyard.
This is exciting! Where x is creatures in your graveyard, this deals x, whereas Flayer+GGT deals x+4; however this only requires 1 Dread Return with applicable targets, while Flayer+GGT requires 2 Dread Returns with either 6 targets, 3 non-token targets and a Bridge, or some other permutation to get enough sac-outlets.
This is basically a strict upgrade in Manaless because of all of the creatures. Regular Dredge still probably wants Flayer due to the higher number of non-creature spells, but Manaless has a better option now!
When the most popular deck in an environment is also among the most winning decks with a win rate significantly above 50% over a long period of time, we investigate. [...] We've seen a reduction in diversity of blue-based non-combo decks [...] also [...] a reduction in diversity in the environment. [...] For these reasons, Deathrite Shaman is banned in Legacy.
Without a hint of irony when they've allowed this to go unchecked for over a decade. Hilarious really. Their blue-bias is obvious at this point, and they're almost making-light of it.
As I'm sure everyone reading this knows: today, 2 July 2018, Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe were banned in Legacy. The official B&R Update can be read here. As much as I would like to talk about how Wizards can publish statements like this.
When the most popular deck in an environment is also among the most winning decks with a win rate significantly above 50% over a long period of time, we investigate.
When they've allowed this to go unchecked for over a decade. Hilarious really. Their blue-bias is really obvious, saying "We've seen a reduction in diversity of blue-based non-combo decks [...] also [...] a reduction in diversity in the environment. [...] For these reasons, Deathrite Shaman is banned in Legacy."
I guess they're honest at least. I wish if they were really worried about their precious midrange blue decks they could have tried banning Deathrite and then waiting to see how the format looked after that. I assume Jund/Czech attrition decks are less interested in Probe when they don't have Deathrite simply due to the nature of cycling through your deck in an almost Xerox-esque way. With Deathrite gone those decks lose the ability to eat their already-cast Probes for value. These midrange GB decks aren't really interested in running Probe just for Cabal Therapy because 2-for-1'ing themselves isn't advantageous for an attrition deck the same way it might be for a combo deck like TES. I don't really think Probe needed to be banned, yet anyway.
More to the point. Gitaxian Probe got the axe. It is what it is, and my complaining won't do anything to change it. Realistically though, I don't think it actually affects us in any meaningful way. Ultimately, for us, Street Wraith does exactly the same thing most of the time. Comparatively, we effectively lose 2 Goblins from Empty the Warrens and we lose knowledge about what our opponents are doing. I'm not saying it doesn't suck pretty hard to lose Probe. It's clearly strictly better than Street Wraith, but it is sort of a "win-more" card. Instead of having 12-20 Goblins on turn 1 or 2, we may now average (probably) 10-16 Goblins on turn 1 or 2. Does this affect our win percentage? It's too early to tell. If we're playing against a deck that can drop a turn 1 or 2 creature then, it becomes problematic for us to only be able to create 10 Goblins instead of 12 on average. It's obviously too early to make absolute statements but I imagine matchups that were completely free like Elves or Death and Taxes may require you to actually think about sequencing correcting, and actually making sure you have lethal through a couple of blockers.
Ultimately though, we're not Oops, All Spells. We didn't play Probe because we needed it, we played it because we liked it. This deck is consistent and has an engine outside of Probe. We're also not ANT or TES. We aren't really looking to win turn 3 or 4 like they are. We were never interested in playing Cabal Therapy for protection; our protection has always been speed and in-so-far as that goes, replacing Probe with Street Wraith doesn't change too much. We just have to be more careful about combat than we were before.
This isn't as bad for us as it is for the other combo decks, in my opinion.
10 damage on turn 2 and 3 is way different than 8 damage on turn 2, 3, and 4
Meta might have less storm-hate while ANT figures out what it's going to do
Are Wishless/Budget versions of Belcher completely dead?
All in all I hope Trall reruns his simulations. I still haven't gotten around to doing my own! I'm really interested in how big of an impact in Storm count -4 Gitaxian Probe/+4 Street Wraith has. I'm looking forward to what Bryant Cook has to say about it. His opinion heavily affects mine. I'll be looking for a writeup on his blog for sure, and I think anyone interested also should.
In the meantime, I'll be replacing Gitaxian Probe's section in the Primer with Street Wraith. Belcher has had some good appearances this year and I don't think this should affect us. If anything it might give us an edge since no one will expect it!
On a completely unrelated note, I'm selling four (4) near mint, Judge promo Gitaxian Probes. Please PM for details!
That's the general idea yeah. I want to take a moment to appreciate timely storm players that play with sharp lines, always keeping the goal firmly in sight. Nothing worse than seeing a storm deck fizzle after 10 minutes of spinning.
Anyone who can effordlessly [sic] get the storm count to 40 in few minutes of spinnning the deck, is a treasure to the cEDH community. ~BigLupu
I'm going to go ahead and address this fervently, as I feel like this is a question that will come up a lot more with the addition of Cinder Glade to the card pool, but before I do that, I need to explain very simply why the vast majority of the decks here are playing 7 Lands. It's because 7 Lands is what it takes to cast and activate Belcher. Modern is not a format with all of the great, easy acceleration of Legacy and Vintage, so being able to ensure that one is able to play all of his Lands, and cast a win condition off of them is very important to the success of a Modern deck. Also, while this deck has good acceleration in the form of things like Wall of Roots, basic Forests are much harder to destroy, and much easier for this deck to find. So, when discussing initial mana sources in this deck, it should always be 7+x. With the current state of Modern, we are not at liberty to play fewer than 7 Lands in this deck.
I think that both Cinder Glade and Stomping Ground have their ups and downs. Right now I'm just trying to test more with glade and have liked it much more. The chances that I have a ground in my starting hand is low and the chances of actually keeping that hand with it is slightly lower than that. Overall I just prefer to keep the two life and I am more likely to fetch up glade much earlier than I would with ground.
I honestly don't see Cinder Glade ever being better than Stomping Ground for exactly the same reason Manatee says. Our having Turn 1 mana is way too important for this deck. So much so that it plays the worst version of a Chancellorby far.
For this, I'm assuming you are playing 60 cards, and only 1 of those is a GR Land, the chances of your having that Land in your opening hand are 11.6%. That is way too high of a percentage for the Land in question not to be an initial mana source. This deck has to mulligan into an initial mana source to be remotely effective. By playing Cinder Glade over Stomping Ground you're effectively playing with 10 mana sources, which is a bad distribution.
I made a table showing the hypergeometric distribution of a deck having any single card in a hand z for every x appearance of that card in the deck.
I used this formula:
[xCk] * [(n - x)C(z - k)] / [nCz]
Where x is the number of initial mana sources in the deck. (x={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,...,16}
Where k is the number of initial mana sources wanted in the hand. (k=1)
Where n is the number of cards in the deck. (n=60)
Where z is the number of cards in the hand. (z={1,2,3,4,5,6,7})
NB: I maximised z for the appearance of only 1 initial mana source. This is because all of our initial spells are G, and we want to run as few Lands as possible in order to have Belcher active as fast as possible; so it stands to reason we only want 1 initial mana source per opening hand.
From this table, one can see that if he wants to maximise the likelihood of seeing a given card when z=7 (i.e. drawing the opening hand), he should play 8 of that card. An example of this is a Delver deck playing 4 Brainstorms and 4 Ponders, which are effectively the same card. Playing 8 of the same card gives one the best statistical likelihood of drawing that card on Turn 1. On the other hand, if one wanted to maximise the likelihood of having any given card on a mulligan to 3, he should play 16 of that card.
Now, which handsize z should be maximised for card count x? Initially one might think that maximising z for 7 would be a good idea, so let's try that. To maximise z for 7, x should be 8. But wait! It's actually in our best interest to play x+1 cards. Why? Because it's better to err on the side of caution. If we play 8 initial mana sources, odds are we'll have .9******* initial mana sources per hand on average, which is 1, yes; but it would be better to play 9 initial mana sources and average 1.******** initial mana sources per hand on average. This means we would have to mulligan less on average.There is still a problem with maximising z for 7 though: if z=7 is maximised to x=9, you're only playing 9 initial mana sources. The probability of drawing none of those 9 and having to mulligan is 30%. That is way too high. Even though you've maximised your chances with respect to z=7, your chances are still too low.
So it would be in our best interest to maximise x for z=6. This brings x+1 to 11, which is what most lists around here are doing. That is, playing the following:
NB: I'm not counting Simian Spirit Guide as an initial mana source, rather as an accelerator. There are not enough Red spells to consider it an initial mana source.
Doing this maximises for a mulligan to 6, meaning that we play 11 cards, giving a 9% probability of seeing an initial mana source on a mulligan to 1.
I achieved that percentage using the following formulae.
The probability of having an initial mana source in the opening hand is x / n.
Where x is the number of initial mana sources in the deck.
Where n is the number of cards in the deck. (n=60)
To find the probability of *not* having an initial mana source in the opening hand, then, is 1 - (x / n).
Where m is the number of mulligans taken. (m={1,2,3,4,5,6,7})
A 9% probability is high though. That would mean 9 out of 100 games you just lose because you never see an initial mana source. So should we go further? Should we maximise for z=5? Actually, yeah. We should. Maximising for z=5 would give a 95% chance of seeing an initial mana source on a mulligan to 1. That's still kind of high. Losing 5 out of 100 games to nothing other than poor deck building isn't something I want to be a part of. Optimising for z=4 though gives about a 97% probability of seeing an initial mana source on a mulligan to 1.
So we should optimise for z=5 or perhaps even z=4 or z=3! But here's the thing: we can't.
We don't have enough playable, Green, initial mana sources in Modern. We have Forest, Stomping Ground, and Chancellor of the Tangle. We can only play 4 Chancellors, and we don't want to play more than 7 Lands. What we really need is something like Elvish Spirit Guide. This is the reason the first things I added to my brew of the deck was 4 Simian Spirit Guides.
This is a PM exchange on 2017-09-04 between me and Tvtyrant.
Quote from "Tvtyrant" »
I guess specifically my interest is in how cyclers and cantrips effect the likelihood of getting a miracle. For instance, if I run three thundering wraths does cycling on my opponents end step what are the chances of that creating a miracle in the next 2 turns?
Quote from lIlIllIlll »
Basically I've assumed a few things here based on what you said:
you only have 3 cards that you can Miracle
you have a 60 card deck
you don't mulligan (i.e. you keep a starting hand of 7)
you don't start with a Miracle in your opening hand (i.e. all 3 of the Miracles are in the remaining 53 cards)
The column A is the probability of Miracling 1 of the 3 in your deck on the draw in the column B. So on your first draw there's a ~,28 probability of getting a Miracle, second ~,3 and so on. Column C is the probability assuming you Cycle. The blue numbers on the side are the percent change.
Basically Cycling on the end step increases your odds of Miracling by 3% on turn 1 down to about 1% on turn 8.
I know that sounds insignificant but you have to remember that based on column A the odds of not getting a Miracle by turn 8 are low, so the net difference that late into the game is minimal because the odds of naturally drawing it are already high. I hope that makes sense.
Basically it's so unlikely that you draw 10 cards and don't Miracle that drawing 20 and not Miracling are effectively equally unlikely.
So it really helps you out Turn 1-5 but after that the difference is pretty negligible, but still very much there.
This is taken from mazeTemporal on Reddit. It is not my work.
Proof:
Assume that you have Dakmor Salvage in hand and The Gitrog Monster and Putrid Imp in play.
Notes for algorithm:
This WILL NOT WORK for Chains of Mephistopheles. Since you cannot perform stack manipulation, it just leaves determinacy to fate = (
Using Kozilek and Ulamog is not a problem, the section of deck between them can be treated as either before K (because it is before the second one) or after K (because it is after the first one).
Definitions:
L => Land
K => Kozilek (or Ulamog, only 1 in the deck)
X => some non-L non-K card
N => number of X in deck
T => 'draw a card' trigger (from dredging a land)
Algorithm:
While draw triggers < number of cards in deck:
- Discard lands such that lands in deck + grave >= 3, putting triggers on stack
- Dredge until you find K, putting all draw triggers on stack
- If you did not find K (deck was odd and K was last card):
- - Draw one card then discard K
- Put shuffle trigger on stack
- While cards in deck >= 3:
- - Dredge
- - If a land flipped, draw 1 card
- Shuffle deck
Draw deck, you are finished
Proving this combo to be determinate requires:
1. Each state finds K, either drawn or milled, such that the combo can continue
2. Each state increases number of draw triggers, reduces number of nonlands in deck,
or leads unidirectionally towards a state which does so
Deck is Even:
K can be found (just dredge right to it)
T increases by >= 1 if any L before K
T increases by >= 1 if at least three L after K
(worst case: deck ends with XL LL causing one L draw. That L will increase T by 1 on the next cycle)
Deck is Odd:
If K is last card:
T increases by >= 2 if at least 3 L before K
T decreases by 1 to draw K
If K is not last card:
Same as Even
Special Case:
Lands drawn in previous cycles will not cause the change of T
for two consecutive cycles to be <= zero
Even:
T increases by >= 0 for any number of L
Odd:
If K is last card:
T >= ceiling(number of L / 2) - 1
T < 0 for number of L = 0
If number of L = 0, T increased by 3 on previous cycle, a net gain of 2
If K is not last card:
Same as Even
In all special cases, where T <= 0, no lands were drawn,
so special cases of T <= 0 never chain into themselves
So this question has been plaguing me for a while now:
What could we play in the wishboard to make 5 mana and a Burning Wish something other than passing the turn in hopes of getting another mana source off the top next turn?
But none of those actually allow you do really do anything unless you draw a Lotus Petal effect. You're pretty much limited to Fiery Gambit. There's nothing you can really do from the position of "I have the potential for 5 mana and a Burning Wish". Just wait till you have 1 more mana and get an Empty the warrens for probably 4 to 8 (depending on how exactly you have 5 mana).
Hey everyone! The topic has been kind of dead for awhile so I figured I should spark some discussion. Since the success of decks playing Chalice of the Void, Thorn of Amethyst, and Pithing Needle is approaching an all-time high, at what point do we start seriously considering replacing our Sideboarded 4x Xantid Swarms with 4x Ingot Chewers?
Based off of recently successful decks, Emma Handy's deck played:
I don't want to go down the slippery slope of metagame discussion. This deck, primarily, should be concerned with going as fast as possible. But when game 3 comes around and 14 of our opponents' cards directly stop what we want to do, it doesn't hurt to consider our best course of action.
Hello everyone! Yesterday I played Belcher in the Legacy Main event of MKM Series Milan 2017, piloting it to a 15th place finish with a result of 6-2.
[...]
The main point here is that I played 10 instead of 11 business spells, as per Trall's paper. I had no problems with this approach and I do not think I mulliganed more than is normal with this kind of deck.
The other noteworthy choices is the split of 2 Chrome Mox, 3 Manamorphose and 4 Pyretic Ritual. The background is that I really hate Chrome Mox; while I can appreciate that it is a permanent source of mana, it just feels incredibly clunky most of time I have it in hand. It also does not make mana by itself if drawn in the late game (everything after turn 2), since we are likely to have no colored cards in hand by that point! I was very happy with having only 2 of them, making room for the 4th Pyretic and the 2-3rd manamorphose.
Manamorphose was really good all day and I have no idea why people are not liking it. The key insight is that you can use it reliably to find mana, but not to find buisness, because of the respective ratios we play. Just don't keep hands what have no buisness, no matter how many cantrips you have, and you are good to go! I feel like people bashing on Manamoprhose are maybe prone to talking themselves into bad keeps with it, which in turn colors their perception of the card.
I was just happy about the free storm count and it even fixed my mana one time for a Burning Wish.
I'll admit that I have not real insight in regards to the 4th Pyretic, other than I had the mana I needed most of the time. It might be correct to just play the 4th Manamorphose instead.
Overall I was very happy with the list, it was a blast to play!
Very nice! How do you feel the lack of Chrome Mox affected your post-board games? The game I would specifically be interested in is the Merfolk game. During game 3, were you ever like "man I really wish I had another Land or another Chrome Mox?" I assume these weren't 4-turn games and were more like-10 turn games. Would having extra initial mana have helped in your opnion?
lIlIllIlll, What are your thoughts in removing Manamorphose in the deck for the full set of Pyretic Ritual and Chrome Mox? The list your friend used to Top 8 just did, and I want to know the incentives of doing so.
I'm going to refrain from directly answering and will defer to Trall's math for now.
Got slightly better overall hand. You’ll mulligan as much (because the number of business spells are the same, this will remain the same percentage) but will be less concerned by fizzling while going off, simply because no Manamorphose = less randomness on draw.
Because of 4 Chrome Mox, you’ll be able to land a turn 1 Belcher, followed by an activation turn 2 or later more often (at the cost of activating turn 1, that’s not what really want)
Because no Manamorphose, the average storm count will decrease = a little less gob’s. We also have a lower variance which mean the number of gob’s will be in [9.50 ; 15.50] 68% of time contrary to the [10 ; 17] in the 3 Chrome Mox, 3 EtW, 4 BW list we see most often.
Some hand will however not be as good as we would like. Not being able to fix mana for Tinder Wall or Infernal Tutor in SB = not fun... I’m not sure that the cost of the decrease of randomness and the average storm count is worth the .4% of fizzling hand...
Conclusion: No advantage gained while cutting Manamorphose
(NB: This is mostly a direct quote from Trall's paper, but I changed some words to make more sense in context)
The point I would like to emphasize is the fact that one loses color fixing for Tinder Wall, and important Sideboard cards like Xantid Swarm or Carpet of Flowers, when cutting Manamorphose. This is a strong reason to keep Manamorphose in: not for corner-cases like making BR for Infernal Tutor to grab a Belcher; for getting initial-mana post-board and even in slower first games.
I'm going to start working on my own Belcher simulation. Not because I disagree with Trall (quite the opposite actually. I respect him a lot and was thrilled when he commented on the thread.), or think his math is wrong, but because there are certain things he didn't extensively test on--like the Manamorphose thing. I would like to finally settle the argument.
Edit #42: Remind me to never reply on mobile. Okay honestly. Never again on mobile.
Welcome to the format. Legacy is great and should you decide to play it, Belcher is certainly a fun approach.
As Jial pointed out, it allows us to get our Land(s) out for free. This is basically what allows the deck to function as it does. We don't want to play any Lands, but Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal aren't fabulous mana-sources, and more importantly Lotus Petal isn't recurring. Though we don't want to play Lands, they are necessary. Land Grant lowers the number of Lands we need to play, because Land Grant can effectively function as Taiga 2-5.
Okay, so I now understand sorta' one aspect of it, but isn't just a dead draw if your doing the Charbelcher combo? Or does Charbelcher even need to hit a land to deal the damage? Thank you for helping me with this, I appreciate it
This is a good question. The answer to your first question is "not really". Land Grant, before you activate Belcher is fine. It just guarantees your Belcher activation does lethal damage. A Land Grant during your Storm combo may not be perfect. It's certainly not as good as a Desperate Ritual, but at worst it's 2 Goblins.
I just want to give a shout out to Brian Guess for placing Top 8 at SCG ATL. Good for him, but I'm also a little pissed. Unfortunately I couldn't make my way down there to be in it with him. It looks like the metagame was really good for Belcher this year. (Last year it wasn't.) I would have liked very much to watch him play in person.
I'm really happy to see Eldrazi becoming a thing. They have no access to Force and their only other types of consistent interaction are Wasteland and Chalice. The former is easily remedied by having a Forest in the Sideboard; the latter can be beaten easily by just having a mathematically strong deck (i.e. by staying fast and consistent) as a Chalice on 0, or even 1 to be honest, doesn't hurt that badly.
The matchup is not free though. Some lists Sideboard Warping Wail which is amazingly annoying to play against, but we also have Sideboard cards to handle it. Another thing to be mindful of is Thorn Amethyst. I'm pretty sure I've only won a single game with an Amethyst in play.
All-in-all though, I'm happy for the success of Eldrazi.
Well speaking of aesthetics, anyone plan to upgrade to the new goblin charbelcher art?
I like the picture but prefer the old frame (I actually wish it was printed in that lovely Van dike brown...)
I would love to. I really like the new art, but my current copies are signed, so it probably won't happen. I'll probably pick them up to get them signed in the future though I won't be playing with them until then.
Wow! Hi. I didn't even realize there was a merge. I thought MTGS was dead! My bad everyone. I'll get to updating the primer, and good call on this card; it seems to be pulling its weight big time on MTGO.
Creature - Zombie Giant
Undergrowth — When Lotleth Giant enters the battlefield, it deals 1 damage to target opponent for each creature card in your graveyard.
This is exciting! Where x is creatures in your graveyard, this deals x, whereas Flayer+GGT deals x+4; however this only requires 1 Dread Return with applicable targets, while Flayer+GGT requires 2 Dread Returns with either 6 targets, 3 non-token targets and a Bridge, or some other permutation to get enough sac-outlets.
This is basically a strict upgrade in Manaless because of all of the creatures. Regular Dredge still probably wants Flayer due to the higher number of non-creature spells, but Manaless has a better option now!
Without a hint of irony when they've allowed this to go unchecked for over a decade. Hilarious really. Their blue-bias is obvious at this point, and they're almost making-light of it.
Whenever Sheldon feels like it, and no sooner.
As I'm sure everyone reading this knows: today, 2 July 2018, Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe were banned in Legacy. The official B&R Update can be read here. As much as I would like to talk about how Wizards can publish statements like this. When they've allowed this to go unchecked for over a decade. Hilarious really. Their blue-bias is really obvious, saying "We've seen a reduction in diversity of blue-based non-combo decks [...] also [...] a reduction in diversity in the environment. [...] For these reasons, Deathrite Shaman is banned in Legacy."
I guess they're honest at least. I wish if they were really worried about their precious midrange blue decks they could have tried banning Deathrite and then waiting to see how the format looked after that. I assume Jund/Czech attrition decks are less interested in Probe when they don't have Deathrite simply due to the nature of cycling through your deck in an almost Xerox-esque way. With Deathrite gone those decks lose the ability to eat their already-cast Probes for value. These midrange GB decks aren't really interested in running Probe just for Cabal Therapy because 2-for-1'ing themselves isn't advantageous for an attrition deck the same way it might be for a combo deck like TES. I don't really think Probe needed to be banned, yet anyway.
More to the point. Gitaxian Probe got the axe. It is what it is, and my complaining won't do anything to change it. Realistically though, I don't think it actually affects us in any meaningful way. Ultimately, for us, Street Wraith does exactly the same thing most of the time. Comparatively, we effectively lose 2 Goblins from Empty the Warrens and we lose knowledge about what our opponents are doing. I'm not saying it doesn't suck pretty hard to lose Probe. It's clearly strictly better than Street Wraith, but it is sort of a "win-more" card. Instead of having 12-20 Goblins on turn 1 or 2, we may now average (probably) 10-16 Goblins on turn 1 or 2. Does this affect our win percentage? It's too early to tell. If we're playing against a deck that can drop a turn 1 or 2 creature then, it becomes problematic for us to only be able to create 10 Goblins instead of 12 on average. It's obviously too early to make absolute statements but I imagine matchups that were completely free like Elves or Death and Taxes may require you to actually think about sequencing correcting, and actually making sure you have lethal through a couple of blockers.
Ultimately though, we're not Oops, All Spells. We didn't play Probe because we needed it, we played it because we liked it. This deck is consistent and has an engine outside of Probe. We're also not ANT or TES. We aren't really looking to win turn 3 or 4 like they are. We were never interested in playing Cabal Therapy for protection; our protection has always been speed and in-so-far as that goes, replacing Probe with Street Wraith doesn't change too much. We just have to be more careful about combat than we were before.
This isn't as bad for us as it is for the other combo decks, in my opinion.
Main things I take away from this:
All in all I hope Trall reruns his simulations. I still haven't gotten around to doing my own! I'm really interested in how big of an impact in Storm count -4 Gitaxian Probe/+4 Street Wraith has. I'm looking forward to what Bryant Cook has to say about it. His opinion heavily affects mine. I'll be looking for a writeup on his blog for sure, and I think anyone interested also should.
In the meantime, I'll be replacing Gitaxian Probe's section in the Primer with Street Wraith. Belcher has had some good appearances this year and I don't think this should affect us. If anything it might give us an edge since no one will expect it!
On a completely unrelated note, I'm selling four (4) near mint, Judge promo Gitaxian Probes. Please PM for details!
Is Cinder Glade an acceptable replacement for Stomping Ground in Modern Belcher?
The following was initially posted here.
I'm going to go ahead and address this fervently, as I feel like this is a question that will come up a lot more with the addition of Cinder Glade to the card pool, but before I do that, I need to explain very simply why the vast majority of the decks here are playing 7 Lands. It's because 7 Lands is what it takes to cast and activate Belcher. Modern is not a format with all of the great, easy acceleration of Legacy and Vintage, so being able to ensure that one is able to play all of his Lands, and cast a win condition off of them is very important to the success of a Modern deck. Also, while this deck has good acceleration in the form of things like Wall of Roots, basic Forests are much harder to destroy, and much easier for this deck to find. So, when discussing initial mana sources in this deck, it should always be 7+x. With the current state of Modern, we are not at liberty to play fewer than 7 Lands in this deck.
The question: is Cinder Glade worse than Stomping Ground in the current version of this deck?
I honestly don't see Cinder Glade ever being better than Stomping Ground for exactly the same reason Manatee says. Our having Turn 1 mana is way too important for this deck. So much so that it plays the worst version of a Chancellor by far.
For this, I'm assuming you are playing 60 cards, and only 1 of those is a GR Land, the chances of your having that Land in your opening hand are 11.6%. That is way too high of a percentage for the Land in question not to be an initial mana source. This deck has to mulligan into an initial mana source to be remotely effective. By playing Cinder Glade over Stomping Ground you're effectively playing with 10 mana sources, which is a bad distribution.
I made a table showing the hypergeometric distribution of a deck having any single card in a hand z for every x appearance of that card in the deck.
I used this formula:
NB: I maximised z for the appearance of only 1 initial mana source. This is because all of our initial spells are G, and we want to run as few Lands as possible in order to have Belcher active as fast as possible; so it stands to reason we only want 1 initial mana source per opening hand.
From this table, one can see that if he wants to maximise the likelihood of seeing a given card when z=7 (i.e. drawing the opening hand), he should play 8 of that card. An example of this is a Delver deck playing 4 Brainstorms and 4 Ponders, which are effectively the same card. Playing 8 of the same card gives one the best statistical likelihood of drawing that card on Turn 1. On the other hand, if one wanted to maximise the likelihood of having any given card on a mulligan to 3, he should play 16 of that card.
Now, which handsize z should be maximised for card count x? Initially one might think that maximising z for 7 would be a good idea, so let's try that. To maximise z for 7, x should be 8. But wait! It's actually in our best interest to play x+1 cards. Why? Because it's better to err on the side of caution. If we play 8 initial mana sources, odds are we'll have .9******* initial mana sources per hand on average, which is 1, yes; but it would be better to play 9 initial mana sources and average 1.******** initial mana sources per hand on average. This means we would have to mulligan less on average.There is still a problem with maximising z for 7 though: if z=7 is maximised to x=9, you're only playing 9 initial mana sources. The probability of drawing none of those 9 and having to mulligan is 30%. That is way too high. Even though you've maximised your chances with respect to z=7, your chances are still too low.
So it would be in our best interest to maximise x for z=6. This brings x+1 to 11, which is what most lists around here are doing. That is, playing the following:
6 Forest
1 Stomping Ground
NB: I'm not counting Simian Spirit Guide as an initial mana source, rather as an accelerator. There are not enough Red spells to consider it an initial mana source.
Doing this maximises for a mulligan to 6, meaning that we play 11 cards, giving a 9% probability of seeing an initial mana source on a mulligan to 1.
I achieved that percentage using the following formulae.
A 9% probability is high though. That would mean 9 out of 100 games you just lose because you never see an initial mana source. So should we go further? Should we maximise for z=5? Actually, yeah. We should. Maximising for z=5 would give a 95% chance of seeing an initial mana source on a mulligan to 1. That's still kind of high. Losing 5 out of 100 games to nothing other than poor deck building isn't something I want to be a part of. Optimising for z=4 though gives about a 97% probability of seeing an initial mana source on a mulligan to 1.
So we should optimise for z=5 or perhaps even z=4 or z=3! But here's the thing: we can't.
We don't have enough playable, Green, initial mana sources in Modern. We have Forest, Stomping Ground, and Chancellor of the Tangle. We can only play 4 Chancellors, and we don't want to play more than 7 Lands. What we really need is something like Elvish Spirit Guide. This is the reason the first things I added to my brew of the deck was 4 Simian Spirit Guides.
How do Cyclers affect the likelihood of getting a Miracle?
This is a PM exchange on 2017-09-04 between me and Tvtyrant.
Proof of Determinacy for The Gitrog Monster Combo
This is taken from mazeTemporal on Reddit. It is not my work.
Proof:
Notes for algorithm:
Using Kozilek and Ulamog is not a problem, the section of deck between them can be treated as either before K (because it is before the second one) or after K (because it is after the first one).
Definitions:
K => Kozilek (or Ulamog, only 1 in the deck)
X => some non-L non-K card
N => number of X in deck
T => 'draw a card' trigger (from dredging a land)
Algorithm:
- Discard lands such that lands in deck + grave >= 3, putting triggers on stack
- Dredge until you find K, putting all draw triggers on stack
- If you did not find K (deck was odd and K was last card):
- - Draw one card then discard K
- Put shuffle trigger on stack
- While cards in deck >= 3:
- - Dredge
- - If a land flipped, draw 1 card
- Shuffle deck
Draw deck, you are finished
Proving this combo to be determinate requires:
2. Each state increases number of draw triggers, reduces number of nonlands in deck,
or leads unidirectionally towards a state which does so
Deck is Even:
T increases by >= 1 if any L before K
T increases by >= 1 if at least three L after K
(worst case: deck ends with XL LL causing one L draw. That L will increase T by 1 on the next cycle)
Deck is Odd:
T increases by >= 2 if at least 3 L before K
T decreases by 1 to draw K
If K is not last card:
Same as Even
Special Case:
for two consecutive cycles to be <= zero
T increases by >= 0 for any number of L
If K is last card:
T >= ceiling(number of L / 2) - 1
T < 0 for number of L = 0
If number of L = 0, T increased by 3 on previous cycle, a net gain of 2
If K is not last card:
Same as Even
In all special cases, where T <= 0, no lands were drawn,
so special cases of T <= 0 never chain into themselves
But seriously. Are you thinking the mono-Green feels better currently? Does it just handle aggro better because of Fog?
Do you miss Blood Moon? Do you miss SSG?
Well assuming you aren't constrained on the color of that mana:
Cruel Bargain
Act on Impulse
Ideas Unbound
But none of those actually allow you do really do anything unless you draw a Lotus Petal effect. You're pretty much limited to Fiery Gambit. There's nothing you can really do from the position of "I have the potential for 5 mana and a Burning Wish". Just wait till you have 1 more mana and get an Empty the warrens for probably 4 to 8 (depending on how exactly you have 5 mana).
Based off of recently successful decks, Emma Handy's deck played:
Hull Breach
Before that, Jonathan Ciccarelli's deck played:Shattering Spree
Trash for Treasure
Shattering Spree
Trash for Treasure
and only 2 Xantid Swarms
I don't want to go down the slippery slope of metagame discussion. This deck, primarily, should be concerned with going as fast as possible. But when game 3 comes around and 14 of our opponents' cards directly stop what we want to do, it doesn't hurt to consider our best course of action.
What do you think?
Very nice! How do you feel the lack of Chrome Mox affected your post-board games? The game I would specifically be interested in is the Merfolk game. During game 3, were you ever like "man I really wish I had another Land or another Chrome Mox?" I assume these weren't 4-turn games and were more like-10 turn games. Would having extra initial mana have helped in your opnion?
I'm going to refrain from directly answering and will defer to Trall's math for now.
(NB: This is mostly a direct quote from Trall's paper, but I changed some words to make more sense in context)
The point I would like to emphasize is the fact that one loses color fixing for Tinder Wall, and important Sideboard cards like Xantid Swarm or Carpet of Flowers, when cutting Manamorphose. This is a strong reason to keep Manamorphose in: not for corner-cases like making BR for Infernal Tutor to grab a Belcher; for getting initial-mana post-board and even in slower first games.
I'm going to start working on my own Belcher simulation. Not because I disagree with Trall (quite the opposite actually. I respect him a lot and was thrilled when he commented on the thread.), or think his math is wrong, but because there are certain things he didn't extensively test on--like the Manamorphose thing. I would like to finally settle the argument.
Edit #42:
Remind me to never reply on mobile.Okay honestly. Never again on mobile.As Jial pointed out, it allows us to get our Land(s) out for free. This is basically what allows the deck to function as it does. We don't want to play any Lands, but Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal aren't fabulous mana-sources, and more importantly Lotus Petal isn't recurring. Though we don't want to play Lands, they are necessary. Land Grant lowers the number of Lands we need to play, because Land Grant can effectively function as Taiga 2-5.
This is a good question. The answer to your first question is "not really". Land Grant, before you activate Belcher is fine. It just guarantees your Belcher activation does lethal damage. A Land Grant during your Storm combo may not be perfect. It's certainly not as good as a Desperate Ritual, but at worst it's 2 Goblins.
To answer your second question, Belcher does not have to hit a Land to do damage. 6/8/2016 - If you reveal no land cards, Goblin Charbelcher deals damage equal to the number of cards revealed, and then you may order your library as you like.
I'm really happy to see Eldrazi becoming a thing. They have no access to Force and their only other types of consistent interaction are Wasteland and Chalice. The former is easily remedied by having a Forest in the Sideboard; the latter can be beaten easily by just having a mathematically strong deck (i.e. by staying fast and consistent) as a Chalice on 0, or even 1 to be honest, doesn't hurt that badly.
The matchup is not free though. Some lists Sideboard Warping Wail which is amazingly annoying to play against, but we also have Sideboard cards to handle it. Another thing to be mindful of is Thorn Amethyst. I'm pretty sure I've only won a single game with an Amethyst in play.
All-in-all though, I'm happy for the success of Eldrazi.
I would love to. I really like the new art, but my current copies are signed, so it probably won't happen. I'll probably pick them up to get them signed in the future though I won't be playing with them until then.