MTG Salvation

On topic, I think something that hasn't been emphasized enough is the delayed nature of all this value. Demonic Pact does literally nothing the turn you play it, and in particular the mind rot effect is awful when your opponent has at least one and probably more turns to play around it.

It's pretty easy to solve and this has been done above. Whenever you draw this card, it's a mulligan unless you're about to die. This dead card reduces your win percentage w (not counting this card) to w', where w' is some number less than w. However, in the case that you are about to lose after drawing this card (probability 1-w'), this card gives you a 49% chance to instead win. Conditional probability therefore gives the new overall win percentage to be w' + 0.49(1-w'), and this needs to be greater than w (your old win percentage) for this card to add value.

In the case that your deck is otherwise evenly matched against your opponent (w = 0.5), solving for w' gives 19.6%. This means that in an even matchup, if you think this card is not worth playing, it is equivalent to assuming that the dead card will make you at least a 20/80 underdog for the 'fair' portion of the match.

For comparison, I think the LR guys do a mulligan analysis on a bunch of MTGO data for each limited format, and they suggest that having one less card makes you about a 40/60 dog depending on format and who goes first. At 40/60, your overall win percentage is just under 70% when you draw this (40% to win a 'fair' game and 49%*60% chance to use this card to mise a losing game), from the previous win percentage of 50%. This means that drawing this card gives you nearly +20% in a fair matchup, which is honestly Pack Rat tier.

For what it's worth I flipped Emrakul and Kozilek off separate Hellcarver Demon flips at the RoE prerelease. That deck went 1-3 but I did not care.

Other than that it's unplayable though. 15 mana is basically your entire deck so without a way to cheat it into play it's just going to rot in your hand.

Quote from Anteaterking »

Does anyone ever come to this thread to see if someone has vented about a game they played against you?

Yep. Every time I play horribly but rip runner-runner-runner-runner-runner, which is more often than I'd like to admit. Hasn't happened yet though.

I would snap play the 49/51 card and consider it a massive bomb, I would say that its power level is something like a one mana Wrath of God in that it turns unwinnable situations into something pretty much even. It's like Krark's Thumb but for entire games.

If you have Grasp in your deck you're the aggro deck by default and you cannot afford to get behind on tempo. Getting your guy dispersed for value will likely put you behind enough on board that you're now favourite to lose. And that's obviously nowhere near the worst thing that can happen when you're playing auras that don't have ETB effects.

I would also point out that the limited cards like instant speed common removal are usually the last cards spoiled, because they usually suck for constructed, so I will say again that this card in particular is not really rateable until I see the full set.

It's playable if you're aggressive enough. Not particularly great though. You want a critical density of cheap guys and stuff with synergy (first strike, evasion, etc.)

It depends on the overall removal suite, but generally auras need to be better than Grasp for me to want to play them. If your opponent untaps and disperses your guy you probably just die. I mean if I have enough synergy, or my deck is super aggressive, then it's playable, but I doubt I'll ever be excited to draft this unless all the removal in Origins is crappy.

This card isn't a bad Lava Axe. It's a bad Lava Axe with suspend 1. That alone means that it's likely unplayable even in the more aggressive black decks (and you have to be solid black, you can't stick a few swamps in your red based beatdown and hope to get there).

Don't play this if winning games is something you enjoy doing. You could probably go full Johnny and maindeck naturalizes etc., but if the net result of your awesome combo is that you played two bad cards to build the world's worst Mindculling then what's the point?

Can't stack damage. Card is therefore very very average. Still gotta play it though I think - there's nothing else I want to play in that slot for GB. Just pick it up 12th if you want it, because nobody else does.

Considering that your first pick was Ghost Council, there are very few cards I want P1P2 more than Spectral Procession. Card is a wrecking ball. Overall I think you very much overvalued the red cards; Skarrgan Firebird is fine, but it's not a reason to go into a fourth color.

Aquastrand Spider and Helium Squirter both clog the skies long enough to make Swans irrelevant, and they do it on their own.

Swans basically has the card text "Flying. Can't block. Can't attack unless your opponent has no blockers." How is that playable?

Swans isn't just bad against red removal. If they chump block it twice and then Arrest it (or Inversion it, or Plummet, or Narcolepsy…) with one of the five cards they drew, then you're most likely not winning that game. Put slightly differently, I'd rather play Tidings than Hikari in this format, and I would mostly jump at the chance for my opponent to spend a card to let me make that trade.

I would like to point out that Swans of Bryn Argoll is pretty much unplayable unless you have a lot of burn yourself, and in many cases can't attack or block unless you want to lose the long game. 99% of pools should not run it.

Green is the best color in this pool. Not sure what the next best color is - white, blue and red are all reasonable. I don't like splashing Apocalypse Hydra unless I'm splashing the green part - it's just a giant idiot if I can't mow down guys with multiple activations. I doubt I'd double splash like Merl has - I think that deck is short a white source, and I see no problem with just being GWr replacing the Air Servant with the Burst Lightning. Alternatively you could cut the Sunforger for Tezzeret's Gambit and go GWu.

I also think that however the pool is built, Tezzeret's Gambit should be in there somewhere. There are enough +1/+1 counters floating around that it should be worth two and a half cards at least some of the time.

Overall this pool is quite weak and I would not expect to day 2 with it.

I have never really found the shroud ability to be a drawback. You'll always have something (ie the Angel) to equip, pump or protect, and as a 4/4 flier you'll normally want to save your tricks for it anyway. It works particularly well with Rusted Relic, as the best way to deal with Relics is to remove metalcraft midcombat and wreck your opponent's race math.