Part I
Removal
Let's pick up in the logical place where we left off last time: by taking a bit of a closer look at the removal in the set. Specifically, we want to look at what the removal actually kills. Let's start with the small and work our way up.
1 Toughness: Chandra's Fury and Eyeblight Assassin
The trickiest thing here is that you will often use these to 'finish something off' e.g. post-combat. And that gives them added value (ok, the other parts of the card do as well). But just on the face of things, how about these? They'll kill 37.3 creatures per draft, or about 19.7% of the format. However, this is including quite a number of unplayable cards. Manually taking out these, I am coming down to 27.8 creatures per draft, or 15.5% of the format. On the other hand, this also excludes Dragon Fodder and all the various thopters which get made, which, all-in-all bring things back up to 20.1%. Of course, in some of these cases (e.g. Aspiring AEronaut), you are only getting part of a card, so keep that in mind. Ultimately, whether you want these cards is going to come down to how much you want the rest of their effects, but the first one should usually be able to pick something off.
2 Toughness: Meteorite, Fiery Impulse, Eyeblight Massacre et al
In addition to the 20% of creatures we were getting for 1 toughness, we add in another 68.5 per draft, getting us up to a rarity-adjusted 56.2% of the format(!) Fiery Impulse is basically always going to be doing this efficiently, whilst Meteorite will usually be inefficient if you don't need the rest of it. Eyeblight Massacre will likely have a chance to kill multiple things, but note that Elves aren't a negligible percentage of the cards which would get killed here - actually 18% of the creatures which would be nabbed will be immune from the Massacre; hopefully if you're running the card, you'll have some of those.... It's worth knowing here as well that Blightcaster triggering really will be worth a card most of the time. I'll also note Weight of the Underworld here, as it kills all these things, but it also cripples everything that will get noted later when I talk about Reave Soul; certainly there's a lot of overlap between the two groups, but Weight will still take care of a big majority of creatures, if somewhat inefficiently.
3 Toughness: Lightning Javelin et al
Fiery Impulse fits here if Spell Mastery is turned on, but I don't think you can count on that (more on this later). Lightning Javelin is yet-another-4-drop-removal-spell, and the only common burn spell which can go to creature or face. How does it do? Well, in addition to the 56.2% we were getting before, we pick up an additional 43.7 creatures per draft, picking us up to 80.1% of creatures we'll expect to see. The key thing, of course, is that the 20% we're missing is... usually going to be the things we really want to kill most.
Edicts: Celestial Flare, Fleshbag Marauder
Not much to say here
Sweepers: Languish, Tragic Arrogance, Eyeblight Massacre
We already talked about Massacre. Languish kills really almost everything (93%). And Tragic Arrogance has been described as an easier-to-cast Duneblast which leaves them with their worst creature... pretty nuts. Fortunately these last two are only at rare.
Kills Most Anything: Swift Reckoning, Claustrophobia, Suppression Bond, Unholy Hunger, Cruel Revival
Swift Reckoning needs them to be attacking, but if they are is the clear most efficient removal in the set. Claustrophobia gets the biscuit for being top of the charts in unconditional removal (well, ok, Goblin Piledriver gets around it, you got me). Suppression Bond is very solid. And the black cards are instant speed ways to reach out and kill things, but they will almost always be doing so inefficiently. Yes, the world we live in makes these near the top, but you really don't actually want tons of them anyway, and you want to try to save them for bombs and/or 2-for-1 scenarios if you can. A note on Cruel Revival: it misses about 9.5% of creatures in the format (and of course gets back the exact same set).
Reave Soul:
How good is this card? Well, it kills 153.7 playable creatures per draft on average, or 85.7% (about 6/7) of the format. So it's quite good at 2 mana.
Archetypes
One of the things Wizards' R&D has been doing for a while is give color pairs certain archetypal outline of what kind of deck they want to build, what goal they want to accomplish. A clear recent example I'd like to invoke here is Dragons of Tarkir's UB Exploit deck. While it was possible to draft a UB deck that was mostly just a 'good stuff' deck, you generally had at least some amount of getting value out of matching cards like Palace Familiar with cards like Gurmag Drowner. In Origins, the archetypes are highlighted in a loose cycle of uncommons - the only gold cards in the set. When looking at the archetypes, we want to look at both the support (your Palace Familiars in the exploit deck) and the and the pay-offs (your Gurmag Drowners in the exploit deck). You need a sufficient amount of both for a synergistic archetype to really come together.
UW Fliers
The only real synergy card here is the uncommon itself, Thunderclap Wyvern, and that is a card which is perfectly fine to play by itself. With such little pay-off, it doesn't really make sense to run numbers on support cards (this is something that will come up in some of the other archetypes as well). Still, you can build a traditional UW fliers kind of deck, though in this set it may be a little more based on tempo plays than holding the grounds with big butts.
WB Enchantments
Pay-offs: Blightcaster, Auramancer, Blessed Spirits, Sigil of the Empty Throne, Starfield of Nyx, Totem-Guide Hartebeest, Blood-Cursed Knight, Helm of the Gods
First of all, that is a lot of pay-offs, but almost all are coming in at higher rarity, so you actually expect to only have 9.5 such cards be opened per draft. That's actually plenty to have an archetype on, but you don't really want to be fighting another player for them (especially since some are of questionable playability), and certainly you won't have a good time if you're fighting 2 other players - which is true of basically any synergistic archetype. Beyond this, the different cards here need slightly different kinds of support.
Auramancer needs an enchantment in your graveyard - mostly this will be Weight of the Underworld, though there are a few beneficial Auras you might play as well - overall, this is pretty sketchy.
Blightcaster needs you to play an enchantment after (and have a good target, though as we've seen, that will usually be the case). This starts being a good proposition after you have somewhere in the 3-4 range, which is probably about where you expect to be going into a draft (though this is a very rough estimate - it's hard to tell how much these will 'go around'). So early in pack 1, it can be a thing, but if you don't have any enchantments by the time pack 2 rolls around, I wouldn't waste a high pick on it.
Sigil of the Empty Throne needs you to play at least one enchantment after, and you start feeling really good once you hit two. You're going to be quite unlikely to hit two, unfortunately, but one... the problem here is, at 5 mana, you need to survive a while without casting your other enchantments, which are often going to be the removal spells you need. The card can come together, but most often, it won't.
Starfield of Nyx has very few targets to animate, as there just aren't many enchantments which aren't Auras to play. The best case scenario for this card is to recur Weight of the Underworld a lot, but I probably would not take this until I had at least 2 Weights in pack 1, or at least 3 after that.
Helm of the Gods wants you to just have a quantity of enchantments in play. It's quite good with 2 in play, but pretty mediocre if you only have 1. This card probably starts becoming playable around 4 enchantments in deck, but you aren't excited until you are closer to the 6-7 range - which will also probably be near the max you can fit in your deck, and unrealistic to get. It's worth noting that Weight of the Underworld often going to the bin fights you here.
Totem-Guide is probably close to playable once you have a single Aura you want to fetch, and pretty good with 2. Going into a draft, you can probably expect you will get a couple, so taking this pretty high in pack 1 seems fine. It's a bit iffier in pack 2 and certainly not recommended pack 3 if you don't have any targets yet.
Finally, Blessed Spirits and Blood-Cursed Knight are just fine cards on their own which start to really move up to being exceptional once you have a few enchantments.
Overall, this definitely feels like an archetype which a draft can support. The payoffs are pretty real, you can likely get a few of them, and in general, the support is going to rest on cards like Weight of the Underworld and Suppression Bonds that you will want to run anyway - this of course means they will be harder to get, but there should be enough to usually do something, as most of these bonuses don't ask for lots of enchantments.
WR... Aggro(?)
Our uncommon here is a 2/2 double strike for 3. Certainly that's a good card, but it's not particularly synergistic - and unlike in MM2015, it's the only double-strike card, so it's not like we're being pushed to draft a bunch of synergy here. I expect this combination to be plenty good as a 'good-stuff' aggressive deck, but synergy is not the name of the game.
WG Renown
Again, there aren't many pay-offs here: Enshrouding Mists gets slightly better, and then there is real benefit in Valeron Wardens. And that is nice, but it's just one uncommon. Also, how many games are you connecting with 5 Renown creatures and not winning anyway? Yeah. But the first card or two is very nice. Generally, being an aggressive creature deck with some tricks looks good, but I don't know that I would call it particularly synergistic.
UB... Graveyard Zombies?
There are a few cards which care about the graveyard here - Possessed Skaab, Cruel Revival, Skaab Goliath, plus Spell Mastery cards. This gives a minor theme, and Cruel Revival in particular will also help you out on the zombie front. Screeching Skaab and Returned Centaur can jump up to being reasonably playable if you have enough payoffs, but in general, I don't think you should go very far out of your way (an it's worth noting that those cards are at least mediocre anyway).
UR Artifacts
Here we come to the next pair which really has some strong synergies. Pay-offs include: Artificer's Epiphany, Thopter Spy Network, Whirler Rogue, Ghirapur AEther Grid, Thopter Engineer, Reclusive Artificer, Chief of the Foundry, and Ramroller.
Most of these cards care about you having at least one artifact (or other artifact) in play. Again, 3-4 such cards gets you a reasonable chance of getting there, and 5-6 give you quite good chances. Including the Thopter-makers, you expect to have about 32 artifacts opened per draft. Unfortunately, some of these are cards like Jayemdae Tome or Brawler's Plate which can be pretty close to unplayable, or Helm of the Gods which aren't for your deck. And many of the others are going to be cards that everyone else wants, too. Still, if you're in this archetype, I certainly expect you to get there often enough for most of these cards to be enabled. Some of these want two artifacts to make these work, and for that you are going to need really at least 7 in your deck (but definitely prefer more, especially for those cards that want even more artifacts). I don't imagine this is going to be super common, so I wouldn't want to take those cards very highly!
Overall, the synergy of this archetype seems moderate. The really exciting pay-offs are at higher rarities, and otherwise, we are getting nice but not spectacular bonuses. Of course, the artifacts themselves tend to be on pretty good cards, so that is a bonus. I will note that this deck 'goes wide' probably more than any other in the format, but most of the benefits for such are in other colors. War Horn has its home here way more than any other deck, though.
UG... ???
I really can't find synergy cards here at all. Bounding Krasis is basically just an efficient card. I guess you are combining blue tempo elements with big green dudes? Anyway, not a synergy deck.
BR Sacrifice
The problem in this deck is that there are very few payoffs. Act of Treason is a real thing, to be sure, and Enthralling Victor is nice here, too. Beyond that, there is Dragon Fodder and some Thopter Makers to give you some fuel. Nantuko Husk is the the main enabler here, but Fiery Conclusion is playable and Blazing Hellhound is very nice if you can get it. And if you're extremely lucky, there's also Liliana.
BG Elves
Here we have the other big synergy deck of the format. Dwynen, Dwynen's Elite, Eyeblight Massacre, Gnarlroot Trapper, Shaman of the Pack, and Sylvan Messenger are your payoffs. For the most part, these cards want you to have some elves, or as many elves possible. And in terms of support, you expect just over 21 elves to be opened per draft. On the downside, some of these, like Deadbridge Shaman and Leaf Gilder, are going to be taken fairly highly even without the synergy, and won't make it around to you if you don't get them early yourself. We're left with definitely enough cards for a deck, but probably not enough for two.
How big are the payoffs? This is my real concern. Shaman of the pack dealing a few damage is nice, and pretty free, but it's not spectacular. Dwynen's Elite giving you a 1/1 is again nice, but not huge if you don't have other synergies. Gnarlroot trapper moves up to being playable, but not often spectacular. And Sylvan Messenger is going to be hard to get to the point where you're expecting to draw more than 1 card off it, which just makes it ok. Dwynen herself is big game, and Eyeblight Massacre as pseudo-Plague Wind is quite nice, but even there, you were probably getting most of that value anyway.
Overall, there's definitely some synergy here, but I don't think you want to go much out of your way for it unless you open, say, a Dwynen.
RG Lands
Here, our pay-offs are Zendikar Incarnate, Zendikar's Roil, Nissa, and maybe Ravaging Blaze or Animists Awakening. There's also not much to enable - Nissa's Pilgrimage being the big one. Okay, just play a bread-and-butter creatures-and-removal deck, maybe with a couple tricks thrown in. It's what these colors are good at anyway.
In general, this seems more like a straight-up good-stuff format with a few nice interactions seeded in than one that's really based on those synergies - basically the anti-cube. And as it is still a core set, that makes a lot of sense and is probably a good thing.
Miscellany
Finally, we come to a miscellaneous section where I've smashed in everything that didn't neatly fit anywhere else.
Spell Mastery
This is not so easy to turn on! Most limited decks are going to have 8 instants and/or sorceries at most. Remember that, unlike most other recent sets, there is only one card here to double count in our creature count AND spell count (Dragon Fodder). With 8 spells, you expect to draw to your third one (and remember, it won't turn on until that third spell cast) until you're 15 cards into your deck. If you're only on the natural draw step plan, that's going to be very near the end of the game. There's no guarantee that this third spell is going to have Spell Mastery or a useful one. And in many decks, some of those 8 non-creature slots will be taken by artifacts or enchantments (or really, more creatures). But okay, it is possible to build a control deck, perhaps, with up to let's say 12 spells. In such a deck, you'll be able to turn Spell Mastery on pretty quickly with good reliability. Including some of the graveyard spillers will help, too. Because there usually isn't much bonus for hitting Spell Mastery, I wouldn't recommend jumping through those hoops very often - but I do look forward to some videos where LSV goes off. Certainly some of how enabled this mechanic will be will be directly tied to the speed of the format, but I wouldn't count on any of your spells having Spell Mastery on, even "by the time you want to cast" them.
Card Draw
There's next to zero card draw in the whole format. No, seriously. The only really solid, stand-on-its-own card draw spell in the entire set is Read the Bones. That's it - it's the only one. Blue only has Bone to Ash and Artificer's Epiphany at common, with a couple situational uncommons. Green actually has almost as much, though per normal it's all tied-in to creatures. So card advantage really needs to come from putting in some work to get your cards in at very impactful spots.
Mana Sinks
Compounding the dearth of card drawing is a lack of mana sinks. At spells below rare, there's Fetid Imp, Shadows of the Past, Volcanic Rambler, Somberwald Alpha, Blazing Hellhound, and a few unplayables. Finding a way to mitigate a lack of having things to do is going to be pretty big for this format, whether that's finding these kinds of cards or killing the opponent before that matters. This does indicate that looting effects will be a bit better though. And the lands - Foundry of the Consuls and Rogue's Passage - look to be pretty darn good indeed.
Mana Fixing
There's very very little fixing in the set. You have Evolving Wilds at Common, Meteorite at Uncommon, and the Painlands and Sword of the Animist at rare. Notwithstanding that I don't think Meteorite is very good at all in the set, this is less fixing than we've seen in... I can't even remember how long. Three or more colors is really out of the question, and even splashing is going to be a bit tricky. Do so sparingly.
Individual Cards
Knightly Valor: If you slap this on a bear, it's basically a 4/4 vigilance haste. And it scales up. Need to pick your spots, but definitely strong.
Yoked Ox: I expect this card to be fringe main-deckable, as it blocks a big chunk of the format, while getting in the way of renown. Biggest problem is that most white decks want to be aggressive themselves - which is why this will usually be a board card. But a consideration in a fliers deck.
Jace's Sanctum: To break even on mana, you need to cast 4 spells after this. That also gets you 4 scrys, which comes close to getting you your card back... but this seems very unrealistic for a draft deck, especially because you're not gaining anything until you are casting even more spells. Card is basically unplayable.
Shadows of the Past: I don't think this card is playable. You need several scrys before you make up for your card disadvantage, and paying 5 to drain 2 is not all that hot. It is a mana-sink, but I'd rather have a 2/2 lifelink I only need to pay for once - and that would be horribly overcosted at 5 CMC.
Undead Servant: I already talked about this card, but it's been getting some hype, so I want to reiterate: you need several copies before this will trigger very reliably, and that's unrealistic, so you really don't want to spend any kind of high pick on it.
Boggart Brute: This card seems very good to me. I think people are underrating Menace a bit, in general.
Elemental Bond: There are just over 65 3-power creatures per draft on average, but surprisingly, only 8.8 are mono-Green. Given that you need to cast this first, and then get at least two such creatures actually down, and at that point it's still only Divination... this card is basically unplayable. Renown really hurts here.
Join me in my next installment soon, where I'll post a wildly premature pick order!
Tuesday, 14 July 2015
Sunday, 12 July 2015
Magic Origins Draft Set Analysis Part I: Overall Numbers
For a similar look at things which focuses a bit more on historical comparisons, I recommend Matthew Watkins's excellent Ars Arcanum
In this post, I want to look at the overall numbers which define this draft format. Questions like "How many creatures are there?" "How big are they?" and the like will be answered.
As for methodology, all of the count numbers I am giving here are based on a per draft basis. What this means is, the number I show will be the number you will expect to be opened in the entire draft for one 8-player draft (on average). For example, the number of 2-drops per draft is 38.6, which means that in the average draft, 38.6 creatures with a Converted Mana Cost (CMC) of exactly 2 will be opened by all the players at the table across the total 24 packs.
There were a number of judgment calls I had to make along the way. Is Harbinger of Tides a 2 CMC spell or 4? (I counted it as 2). What about X spells? (I counted them with X = 1). Obviously the rules view these a particular way, but here I am more concerned about how they actually play out - I tend to try to put everything as cheaper here, as you can cast the cards there, so that's where they start to make an impact. Furthermore, I tended to count all the variable-sized things as their smallest version (so renown is off), with the one noticeable exception of Revenant, which I labelled a 3/3. In all of this, there was some guesswork, but I tried to do my best to account for variability. I make this note here, though, so everyone is aware that this stuff will change things, though because these cards aren't very plentiful, it won't have a big effect on the overall format.
With that out of the way, let's start looking at things. We'll start with the mana curve of creatures. Here's a chart of the CMC of all creatures broken out by colour:
Here's the same chart, but without the overall count (so as to be easier to see color-by-color):
So we see a plurality of creatures in the set cost 3. G and W have the most cheap guys. U somehow has a glut of 4-drops.
Next, we'll take another pass at the creatures, but this time by power and toughness instead of by CMC:
Here we see that a big percentage of cards in the format have 2 power and/or toughness. The toughness curve is just to the right of the power curve, so the back-ends tend to be just a little bit higher than the fronts. We can see, though, that there are very few creatures with either power or toughness greater than 4. Given that there are 8 players in the draft, this works out to around 2 such creatures per player per draft, and given that some of these will go unplayed (due to ending up out-of-color or actually unplayable, as several of them actually are), most games you won't see one. If we extend this down to include 4 p/t critters as well, it comes to closer to 3 creatures per player by power, and 5 by toughness. This likely means just under one per game in terms of power, and a bit over one by toughness.
Now, let's break this down by color, with separate graphs for power and toughness:
Black has a higher-than-average percentage of the 3-power creatures, but the big news here is that blue is blowing the 3-toughness out-of-the-water, at 38% of the total.
Next, let's combine these results to look at the typical size of a creature for its cost:
These averages are, once again, weighted by their frequency in packs (i.e. commons count for more than rares). We can see that the slopes are generally pretty gradual (and most of the big spikes are because there are very few different cards and that color and CMC combination), and the biggest upward spike happens at 6 CMC - although you can definitely argue that 2-3 CMC creatures are more efficient in some absolute sense.
Last but not least for creatures, let's look at my favorite little image for checking out the vanilla stats in a format, the Eat/Bounce/Trade Chart:
The way to read this is that, if you have a creature of the size of one of the top two rows, it tells you how many creatures at a given CMC either eat that creature, bounce with it, or trade with it, from each of the three sections, respectively. For instance, if I have a 2/2, at a CMC of 2: 2.37 creatures per draft will eat it (from the top section), 4.752 creatures will bounce with it, and 22.525 creatures per draft will trade with it; at a CMC of 3, that shifts to 9.44 eating it, 10.59 bouncing with it, and 30.30 trading with it.
I do want to note that none of these charts take abilities like first strike or double strike into account, relying instead on pure size. In this format, you need to account for a shift of two commons, two uncommons, and a rare (all in white and red).
Anyway, the big takeaway here, to my eyes, is that there's very little that interacts favorably with a Bear. If you're on the play, the only card that would eat it at 2 mana or less actually ETB tapped (Shambling Ghoul), so you're actually down to Consul's Lieutenant and Knight of the White Orchid. Even moving up to CMC 3, you're only at about 2 cards per player per draft, and again, some of these are going to be stuck in sideboards as their drafters will shift to other colors. So it looks like the real way to deal with these things is to trade, which leads me to think it's going to be fairly important to have a pretty reasonable number of 2-drops in the format. I don't think you necessarily need to have a deck chock full of them, but you are really going to want at least a few - and there aren't all that many to go around.
Finally, let's take a quick look at the interactive spells en masse:
I don't know that this tells you all that much really, but the big glut at 4 CMC is interesting - basically every color but blue has a common removal spell, so there you go.
In this post, I want to look at the overall numbers which define this draft format. Questions like "How many creatures are there?" "How big are they?" and the like will be answered.
As for methodology, all of the count numbers I am giving here are based on a per draft basis. What this means is, the number I show will be the number you will expect to be opened in the entire draft for one 8-player draft (on average). For example, the number of 2-drops per draft is 38.6, which means that in the average draft, 38.6 creatures with a Converted Mana Cost (CMC) of exactly 2 will be opened by all the players at the table across the total 24 packs.
There were a number of judgment calls I had to make along the way. Is Harbinger of Tides a 2 CMC spell or 4? (I counted it as 2). What about X spells? (I counted them with X = 1). Obviously the rules view these a particular way, but here I am more concerned about how they actually play out - I tend to try to put everything as cheaper here, as you can cast the cards there, so that's where they start to make an impact. Furthermore, I tended to count all the variable-sized things as their smallest version (so renown is off), with the one noticeable exception of Revenant, which I labelled a 3/3. In all of this, there was some guesswork, but I tried to do my best to account for variability. I make this note here, though, so everyone is aware that this stuff will change things, though because these cards aren't very plentiful, it won't have a big effect on the overall format.
With that out of the way, let's start looking at things. We'll start with the mana curve of creatures. Here's a chart of the CMC of all creatures broken out by colour:
Here's the same chart, but without the overall count (so as to be easier to see color-by-color):
So we see a plurality of creatures in the set cost 3. G and W have the most cheap guys. U somehow has a glut of 4-drops.
Next, we'll take another pass at the creatures, but this time by power and toughness instead of by CMC:
Here we see that a big percentage of cards in the format have 2 power and/or toughness. The toughness curve is just to the right of the power curve, so the back-ends tend to be just a little bit higher than the fronts. We can see, though, that there are very few creatures with either power or toughness greater than 4. Given that there are 8 players in the draft, this works out to around 2 such creatures per player per draft, and given that some of these will go unplayed (due to ending up out-of-color or actually unplayable, as several of them actually are), most games you won't see one. If we extend this down to include 4 p/t critters as well, it comes to closer to 3 creatures per player by power, and 5 by toughness. This likely means just under one per game in terms of power, and a bit over one by toughness.
Now, let's break this down by color, with separate graphs for power and toughness:
Black has a higher-than-average percentage of the 3-power creatures, but the big news here is that blue is blowing the 3-toughness out-of-the-water, at 38% of the total.
Next, let's combine these results to look at the typical size of a creature for its cost:
These averages are, once again, weighted by their frequency in packs (i.e. commons count for more than rares). We can see that the slopes are generally pretty gradual (and most of the big spikes are because there are very few different cards and that color and CMC combination), and the biggest upward spike happens at 6 CMC - although you can definitely argue that 2-3 CMC creatures are more efficient in some absolute sense.
Last but not least for creatures, let's look at my favorite little image for checking out the vanilla stats in a format, the Eat/Bounce/Trade Chart:
The way to read this is that, if you have a creature of the size of one of the top two rows, it tells you how many creatures at a given CMC either eat that creature, bounce with it, or trade with it, from each of the three sections, respectively. For instance, if I have a 2/2, at a CMC of 2: 2.37 creatures per draft will eat it (from the top section), 4.752 creatures will bounce with it, and 22.525 creatures per draft will trade with it; at a CMC of 3, that shifts to 9.44 eating it, 10.59 bouncing with it, and 30.30 trading with it.
I do want to note that none of these charts take abilities like first strike or double strike into account, relying instead on pure size. In this format, you need to account for a shift of two commons, two uncommons, and a rare (all in white and red).
Anyway, the big takeaway here, to my eyes, is that there's very little that interacts favorably with a Bear. If you're on the play, the only card that would eat it at 2 mana or less actually ETB tapped (Shambling Ghoul), so you're actually down to Consul's Lieutenant and Knight of the White Orchid. Even moving up to CMC 3, you're only at about 2 cards per player per draft, and again, some of these are going to be stuck in sideboards as their drafters will shift to other colors. So it looks like the real way to deal with these things is to trade, which leads me to think it's going to be fairly important to have a pretty reasonable number of 2-drops in the format. I don't think you necessarily need to have a deck chock full of them, but you are really going to want at least a few - and there aren't all that many to go around.
Finally, let's take a quick look at the interactive spells en masse:
I don't know that this tells you all that much really, but the big glut at 4 CMC is interesting - basically every color but blue has a common removal spell, so there you go.
Saturday, 27 June 2015
MtG Math: Timberpack Wolf cycle
There are a lot of previews coming in fast and furious for Magic Origins, and I would like to devote some time to the larger set (though I am not sure I will really get the chance to until the whole thing is spoiled). For now, though, I want to focus on a cycle of commons for limited which were spoiled in this week's Limited Information column, which can be found here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/limited-information/strength-numbers-2015-06-24
I want to start with the blue entry in the cycle, Faerie Miscreant. A 1/1 flier for 1 just doesn't cut it as a playable card (at least in modern limited formats), so we need to look to the rest of the card to make up for this deficit. And each one past the first you cast - assuming you have one which survived - draws a card. Drawing a card is a good upside, but of course the first thing isn't getting you any value at all, so we need to spread that benefit out. Effectively, with 2, you've spent 2 cards and UU to get 2 1/1 fliers and 1 card back. So net, we've spent 1 card and gotten 2 1/1 fliers for UU. If we add in a 3rd, we've spent UUU and 3 cards for 3 1/1 fliers and 2 cards back. So we can see pretty quickly how this scales - we're always putting 1 card in, net. That's the cost in cards, 1 net card. In terms of tempo and board impact, we're spending N blue mana for N 1/1 fliers. That's a really bad deal at N = 1, a good deal at N=2 (I've seen a comparison to Raise the Alarm panning this; of course being an instant is nice there, but here we get fliers, and I think that's significantly more important), excellent at N=3 (Spectral Procession), and it starts to get bonkers with higher N.
(Technically, this is a little bit different from that, since netting 1 card in isn't the same as actually just casting one card - the two big differences are that you can do this on the installment plan, i.e. across multiple different turns, and that drawing extra cards effectively makes your deck smaller - both of these are generally small plusses).
Okay, that's all well and good, but you actually need to draw that many copies of the card for it to be worth it. So here's where the math comes in: How many are we actually going to draw? I'm glad you asked. Here's a chart describing how many you would expect to have drawn in your top 15 cards - that's through turn 9 on the play, or turn 8 on the draw (or a bit sooner when you start talking about chaining lots, since they will be drawing for you). Given that you may have some card draw, this is, very roughly, how long you would expect an average limited game to last. Of course, that will depend on the speed of the format, and it actually looks to me like this is being a bit generous to this card, as you probably won't quite have this much time. Anyway, the chart:
The thing to realize is that it doesn't actually hurt you if you don't draw any. So it actually looks like 3 may well be the worst place to be. But realistically, I don't think you can even consider playing any of these things until you hit 4, and you don't really want to play them until you have 5. Of course, once you have more than 5, they actually start to be pretty good cards - and with this many, you have cantrips, which means you can start thinking about shaving a land.
Of course, this begs the question, how realistic is it for me to actually get that many? And you might think, nobody will want this card, my chances are actually pretty good. While the beginning of that premise isn't so bad, the problem once again comes with numbers. In any given draft (just forget about sealed, it's a pipe dream), there will be 24 packs opened. There are 101 commons in the set. If we ignore foils, there are 10 commons in every pack (if I understand how foils work right, then there will, in reality, be slightly less than this on average, but the difference will be small). So every pack has a 10/101 or 9.9% chance of having any particular common - in this case, our Faerie friend. It doesn't take much work to figure out that, on average, there are going to be a bit more than 2.3 opened per draft. Ok, but there's some variation, right? Yes. Assuming each pack has 10 distinct-but-otherwise-random commons, here's the likelihood of having every given number of a particular common opened in the draft:
So 2 is most likely, with 3 slightly more likely than 1. To have 5 or more? We're looking at just over 8%. And you actually have to get all of these cards, which is certainly not a given. So okay, it will be rare. But 8% is like 1 in 12 drafts, if you can get them all. Of course, you still don't want to spend high picks on these - you really want to wheel them. And you need them to be in-color. Realistically, going into a draft, you are just going to pass these around all the time, unless you happen to see several fairly early on. By the time you see 3 in pack 1, you actually have pretty reasonable chances to have enough get opened (even here, you're just under 50% to have at least 2 more opened, so you don't want to give anything significant up).
So to sum up for the card, look for lots of them, and you can take a chance. You want at least 5 to play any. But if you just treat it as totally unplayable, you're missing very little equity.
Okay, great. This card is part of a cycle, though, and this second chart will really help us figure out the value of the others.
Let's go to black next, with Undead Servant. Again, a 3/2 for 4 doesn't really cut it. So you need to have multiples of this thing. The subtle difference here is that you get a 2/2 for *each* card in the graveyard with this name, so the upside on getting lots is bigger. 1 is a 3/2, 2 is 2 3/2s and a 2/2 for 2 cards, 3 is 3 3/2s and 3 2/2s for 3 cards. The second is makes the card decent (and good enough to play), but it takes the third to make it really good. This is going to obey the same math as we saw above, and I think in this case, we can get away with a bit fewer, since we're closer to being a real card to start with, but it seems like we're still going to want at least 4 to play any, and that is still pretty unlikely. But if you notice a few early on and can wheel them all out of your first pack, you can set yourself up - it's something to watch out for.
The red one, Infectious Bloodlust, is perhaps both the most interesting and the most difficult to evaluate. Someone has remarked that Goblin War-paint wasn't particularly playable even in its archetype in MM2. That's true, but MM2 is a format with a very high power level, so I imagine the bar will be significantly lower in this set. And while this card does force you to attack, and give 1 less toughness, being able to search up another copy is pretty real upside. Ok, I don't think this card is going to be very good at all if you only get one copy. But you don't actually want to draw more copies really - you want them to be in your deck in order to get your value. Indeed, probably the optimal number of this card is 2-3, which is a very reasonable number to have opened. Of course, you do have to potentially worry about competition for them. And you probably don't want to grab your first in pack 3, or even late in pack 2. If you have an aggressive deck with lots of 2-drops, though, this seems quite playable at 2-3 copies.
The green one, Timberpack Wolf, is the reprint of the set. Now, I haven't played with the card before, so you all may have a better feel for it than me. But I think this card, like classic slivers, is going to be pretty prone to being overrated. Okay, it's a 2/2 for 2, so the downside is really not bad - Grizzly Bears are probably totally playable, if not exciting. But if you only have one in your deck, it's just not that exciting. If you have two, you're only 4.6% to have both on curve on the play, 5.8% on the draw. Once you get to three, you're up to 12.1% on the play, 14.9% on the draw, to have two of them by turn 3. And this is assuming that you haven't mulliganed and can cast them (and keep in mind that any hand with 2 of these in it is significantly more likely than normal to be short of lands). You're very unlikely to get more than 3, considering there probably won't be that many opened, and you're going to have to fight people for this more than the previous cards in the cycle, I would guess. Once you get to a board stall, multiple of these are better than Bears, certainly, but they're not tons better. The big thing is that they are more able to hold off a big creature. But they can't exactly attack through. And they're still quite a bit worse than Watchwolves, as killing one cascades into shrinking the rest - which is something you'll need to watch out for. All in all, the upside you're getting over bears is quite tiny until you start to get a lot - and I wouldn't anticipate that being super likely.
Finally, we have the white entry, Cleric of the Forward Order. I've actually been progressing through these from what I think is worst to best, in order (as well as being a WUBRG which is offset by one). And I do indeed think this is the best of the bunch. This is largely because it's the best card when it's all by its lonesome self. It is just a bear, but it gains a little life. 2 life really isn't nothing. And then it stacks, so the second gains 4, the third gains 6, etc. Okay, life-gain is often derided as not being worth very much, but it really does have a pretty significant impact in a lot of cases. Of course, board presence is quite a bit more important in most limited games. So why do I think this is better than the wolf? Well, mostly because this card is better when you aren't curving out with multiples perfectly - which is the vast majority of the time - and not that much worse when you are getting a lot. I mean, I would rather have 3 4/4s than 3 2/2s, for sure, but 12 life isn't nothing. Okay, if you are getting 3, you definitely take the wolves. If you are only having 2, you probably take the wolves, but it's slight. And with just 1, you clearly take the Cleric. The bigger point is, you are unlikely to have enough in your deck to get 2+ with good consistency, and very unlikely to get 3+. Cleric of the Forward Order is probably still only a mediocre card - a middle pick, though it could be better if the format is pretty aggressive, and you need 2 drops. The life gain is better there, too.
I want to start with the blue entry in the cycle, Faerie Miscreant. A 1/1 flier for 1 just doesn't cut it as a playable card (at least in modern limited formats), so we need to look to the rest of the card to make up for this deficit. And each one past the first you cast - assuming you have one which survived - draws a card. Drawing a card is a good upside, but of course the first thing isn't getting you any value at all, so we need to spread that benefit out. Effectively, with 2, you've spent 2 cards and UU to get 2 1/1 fliers and 1 card back. So net, we've spent 1 card and gotten 2 1/1 fliers for UU. If we add in a 3rd, we've spent UUU and 3 cards for 3 1/1 fliers and 2 cards back. So we can see pretty quickly how this scales - we're always putting 1 card in, net. That's the cost in cards, 1 net card. In terms of tempo and board impact, we're spending N blue mana for N 1/1 fliers. That's a really bad deal at N = 1, a good deal at N=2 (I've seen a comparison to Raise the Alarm panning this; of course being an instant is nice there, but here we get fliers, and I think that's significantly more important), excellent at N=3 (Spectral Procession), and it starts to get bonkers with higher N.
(Technically, this is a little bit different from that, since netting 1 card in isn't the same as actually just casting one card - the two big differences are that you can do this on the installment plan, i.e. across multiple different turns, and that drawing extra cards effectively makes your deck smaller - both of these are generally small plusses).
Okay, that's all well and good, but you actually need to draw that many copies of the card for it to be worth it. So here's where the math comes in: How many are we actually going to draw? I'm glad you asked. Here's a chart describing how many you would expect to have drawn in your top 15 cards - that's through turn 9 on the play, or turn 8 on the draw (or a bit sooner when you start talking about chaining lots, since they will be drawing for you). Given that you may have some card draw, this is, very roughly, how long you would expect an average limited game to last. Of course, that will depend on the speed of the format, and it actually looks to me like this is being a bit generous to this card, as you probably won't quite have this much time. Anyway, the chart:
Of course, this begs the question, how realistic is it for me to actually get that many? And you might think, nobody will want this card, my chances are actually pretty good. While the beginning of that premise isn't so bad, the problem once again comes with numbers. In any given draft (just forget about sealed, it's a pipe dream), there will be 24 packs opened. There are 101 commons in the set. If we ignore foils, there are 10 commons in every pack (if I understand how foils work right, then there will, in reality, be slightly less than this on average, but the difference will be small). So every pack has a 10/101 or 9.9% chance of having any particular common - in this case, our Faerie friend. It doesn't take much work to figure out that, on average, there are going to be a bit more than 2.3 opened per draft. Ok, but there's some variation, right? Yes. Assuming each pack has 10 distinct-but-otherwise-random commons, here's the likelihood of having every given number of a particular common opened in the draft:
So 2 is most likely, with 3 slightly more likely than 1. To have 5 or more? We're looking at just over 8%. And you actually have to get all of these cards, which is certainly not a given. So okay, it will be rare. But 8% is like 1 in 12 drafts, if you can get them all. Of course, you still don't want to spend high picks on these - you really want to wheel them. And you need them to be in-color. Realistically, going into a draft, you are just going to pass these around all the time, unless you happen to see several fairly early on. By the time you see 3 in pack 1, you actually have pretty reasonable chances to have enough get opened (even here, you're just under 50% to have at least 2 more opened, so you don't want to give anything significant up).
So to sum up for the card, look for lots of them, and you can take a chance. You want at least 5 to play any. But if you just treat it as totally unplayable, you're missing very little equity.
Okay, great. This card is part of a cycle, though, and this second chart will really help us figure out the value of the others.
Let's go to black next, with Undead Servant. Again, a 3/2 for 4 doesn't really cut it. So you need to have multiples of this thing. The subtle difference here is that you get a 2/2 for *each* card in the graveyard with this name, so the upside on getting lots is bigger. 1 is a 3/2, 2 is 2 3/2s and a 2/2 for 2 cards, 3 is 3 3/2s and 3 2/2s for 3 cards. The second is makes the card decent (and good enough to play), but it takes the third to make it really good. This is going to obey the same math as we saw above, and I think in this case, we can get away with a bit fewer, since we're closer to being a real card to start with, but it seems like we're still going to want at least 4 to play any, and that is still pretty unlikely. But if you notice a few early on and can wheel them all out of your first pack, you can set yourself up - it's something to watch out for.
The red one, Infectious Bloodlust, is perhaps both the most interesting and the most difficult to evaluate. Someone has remarked that Goblin War-paint wasn't particularly playable even in its archetype in MM2. That's true, but MM2 is a format with a very high power level, so I imagine the bar will be significantly lower in this set. And while this card does force you to attack, and give 1 less toughness, being able to search up another copy is pretty real upside. Ok, I don't think this card is going to be very good at all if you only get one copy. But you don't actually want to draw more copies really - you want them to be in your deck in order to get your value. Indeed, probably the optimal number of this card is 2-3, which is a very reasonable number to have opened. Of course, you do have to potentially worry about competition for them. And you probably don't want to grab your first in pack 3, or even late in pack 2. If you have an aggressive deck with lots of 2-drops, though, this seems quite playable at 2-3 copies.
The green one, Timberpack Wolf, is the reprint of the set. Now, I haven't played with the card before, so you all may have a better feel for it than me. But I think this card, like classic slivers, is going to be pretty prone to being overrated. Okay, it's a 2/2 for 2, so the downside is really not bad - Grizzly Bears are probably totally playable, if not exciting. But if you only have one in your deck, it's just not that exciting. If you have two, you're only 4.6% to have both on curve on the play, 5.8% on the draw. Once you get to three, you're up to 12.1% on the play, 14.9% on the draw, to have two of them by turn 3. And this is assuming that you haven't mulliganed and can cast them (and keep in mind that any hand with 2 of these in it is significantly more likely than normal to be short of lands). You're very unlikely to get more than 3, considering there probably won't be that many opened, and you're going to have to fight people for this more than the previous cards in the cycle, I would guess. Once you get to a board stall, multiple of these are better than Bears, certainly, but they're not tons better. The big thing is that they are more able to hold off a big creature. But they can't exactly attack through. And they're still quite a bit worse than Watchwolves, as killing one cascades into shrinking the rest - which is something you'll need to watch out for. All in all, the upside you're getting over bears is quite tiny until you start to get a lot - and I wouldn't anticipate that being super likely.
Finally, we have the white entry, Cleric of the Forward Order. I've actually been progressing through these from what I think is worst to best, in order (as well as being a WUBRG which is offset by one). And I do indeed think this is the best of the bunch. This is largely because it's the best card when it's all by its lonesome self. It is just a bear, but it gains a little life. 2 life really isn't nothing. And then it stacks, so the second gains 4, the third gains 6, etc. Okay, life-gain is often derided as not being worth very much, but it really does have a pretty significant impact in a lot of cases. Of course, board presence is quite a bit more important in most limited games. So why do I think this is better than the wolf? Well, mostly because this card is better when you aren't curving out with multiples perfectly - which is the vast majority of the time - and not that much worse when you are getting a lot. I mean, I would rather have 3 4/4s than 3 2/2s, for sure, but 12 life isn't nothing. Okay, if you are getting 3, you definitely take the wolves. If you are only having 2, you probably take the wolves, but it's slight. And with just 1, you clearly take the Cleric. The bigger point is, you are unlikely to have enough in your deck to get 2+ with good consistency, and very unlikely to get 3+. Cleric of the Forward Order is probably still only a mediocre card - a middle pick, though it could be better if the format is pretty aggressive, and you need 2 drops. The life gain is better there, too.
Friday, 26 June 2015
Let's Talk Tunnel
Tunnel is a card that I think is pretty poorly understood. I certainly know that my friend Adam is not a big fan of the card, and he has said that he feels confused by it often. So hopefully this little article will help to clear things up a bit. Let's dive right in, and look at the different modes Tunnel presents.
Tunnel as VP
The biggest thing to remember about Tunnel is that it provides 2 VP for 3 coins. In terms of coins, that's a more efficient rate than Duchy even, but of course cards tend to be more important than coins, and this is less efficient cards-wise. That hurts you both in that you have to use two buys on this rather than just one, and moreover because you will have to draw two junky cards every shuffle rather than one. Still, sometimes you just need points, and sometimes this is upping the total amount available to you.
I don't have any specific example games here, because it's just too ubiquitous and non-specific to really have - you get the idea though, it's just a green card like Estate or Duchy, just a bit between.
Tunnel as Defense
This is perhaps the biggest trap of all. Your opponent has discard attacks, and you think, aha, I can get tunnels, and then when they attack me, I will gain golds. The problem here is that gaining golds just isn't very good very often in this scenario. Essentially, what you are saying when you do this is, "If I gain enough Golds, my three card hands can beat you". Well, this is usually just a losing proposition. Of course, there are probably some exceptions, where there is just nothing to do, no way to draw, the game will be very long, and you can also leverage the victory part of the Tunnel. But these are going to be exceedingly rare, and for the most part, you would just rather be on the side of the attack, and in general, just having better stuff than a do-nothing green card. There is also, of course, no guarantee that any given hand gets attacked, so you have a pretty good chance of not getting your benefit - unless, of course, your opponent has built a consistent engine. In that case, though, you would almost always have been better served to build such an engine yourself! I will note that using Tunnel as a defense is probably more realistic in multiplayer, where you're much more likely to get attacked every turn - but I still wouldn't expect it to be good often.
I also don't have examples here, because I can't find any recent games of mine where anyone really did this. The word is more or less out now, at least at the high levels, but it wasn't always so, and you will still see quite a number of players falling for this idea.
The Headlong Rush for Gold-Flood
This one is ever-popular. The basic idea is to get Tunnels and enablers (discard outlets) en masse, to then acquire golds en masse, to then buy things. This strategy consistently gets way overrated. The first problem is that you need to get things to line up in the right order for this to work at all - and if you build it right, they usually will, but you're still hanging some non-trivial percentage for disaster. The next problem is that this is slow. First, you have to get Tunnels, which are cards that actively hurt your deck. The next shuffle, you get to start gaining gold, but you won't reap the benefits of that gold until the shuffle after that. So it takes a long time. Further compounding this, you actually need to get a lot of gold before you can do what you want. Typically, your enablers are going to leave you down a card. That means you'll need two gold and two copper in order to buy your province. It takes quite a lot of cards in order to get that set up reliably, even with sifting benefits. Keep in mind one alternative is always buy silver to buy gold, and that is going to be a lot easier on you to reach 8 coins in terms of needing golds. In order to alleviate this problem, you are going to need really exceptional enablers. The best by far are Storeroom and Embassy. They just let you see so many cards, and they provide additional economic benefits to lessen the burden of needing to get Gold Gold Copper Copper exactly. Even with these cards, the strategy is only a reasonably good baseline, not anything super amazing. Young Witch is another mention, but this is not because it's really a good enabler, but because the attack synergizes with the slog-like nature of the Gold Flood strategy to start with. With worse enablers, you should be quite leery indeed.
When you're building this deck, the emphasis should really be on the enablers far more than the Tunnels. The quick thing is that the enablers do something for your deck if they don't collide, whereas the Tunnels don't. They also accelerate your shuffles even when they 'miss', which is a big deal in this kind of deck. Furthermore, you just don't really need that many Tunnels. Getting a couple Golds per shuffle reliably and getting back round to them faster is simply a much bigger deal than potentially getting a higher number of golds per shuffle.
I have one example game here: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150611/log.50a94f0ce4b07a80ae66d119.1434063461261.txt
You'll see I focus on getting my Embassies up much moreso than the Tunnels, and it pays very good dividends (of course, I was also absurdly lucky here). My opponent actually also plays pretty well (perhaps his first Duchy should be another Embassy - in general this is true anyway - but it is hard to criticize as he is so far behind and clearly needs to get rather lucky to have a chance), and his draws are more reasonable as a baseline here.
Tunnel as Payload
This is something I don't see very often, but it's I think pretty significantly the best use of the card. The concept is pretty simple: you build up a big draw engine, then you use a Tunnel to gain Golds to use as the economic finish. The nice thing about this is that a lot of your enablers are cards you already want to grease the wheels of your engine, you can use a single Tunnel multiple times in a turn, and you can use all your buys going forward on engine pieces, without needing to waste any just making money. Also, because engines draw so much, the speed both at which you acquire golds and at which you are able to reap the benefits of them is quite high.
The key to playing this kind of deck is to get your engine up and running first, and add the Tunnel as a payload card. You also want to think about potentially limiting the activations of your tunnel - Gold is a card that is generally pretty good when it's free, but you don't always want more. It's important to keep your deck-size under control and your reliability up - and there's little point in making more money than you need. Furthermore, there are often going to be more opportunities on later turns.
Let's look at a couple of example games I played here:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430163648667.txt
Here, I get lots of enablers, because they will help get my engine firing anyway. I do take an early Tunnel and a couple of gold, as I need to get my economy up to get the Hunting Grounds I need. But I don't activate it every time, at least until I am getting into draw-my-deck territory. Because I have a high number of sifters, my deck is reliable, and when I get enough Hunting Grounds on-line, my deck explodes, closing out 6 Provinces over 2 turns.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150507/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1431010794761.txt
This game is a similar story. One Tunnel soon (in this case, I got to trash Hovel, which had me pulling the trigger sooner than I normally would). Pick up a forge to start coalescing, and then go to town. Forging extra Golds into Hunting Grounds is a big deal here, and while I do go a bit overboard in getting a zillion golds at the end (probably not really the best play), it doesn't really matter, as the game is just ending.
Tunnel as VP
The biggest thing to remember about Tunnel is that it provides 2 VP for 3 coins. In terms of coins, that's a more efficient rate than Duchy even, but of course cards tend to be more important than coins, and this is less efficient cards-wise. That hurts you both in that you have to use two buys on this rather than just one, and moreover because you will have to draw two junky cards every shuffle rather than one. Still, sometimes you just need points, and sometimes this is upping the total amount available to you.
I don't have any specific example games here, because it's just too ubiquitous and non-specific to really have - you get the idea though, it's just a green card like Estate or Duchy, just a bit between.
Tunnel as Defense
This is perhaps the biggest trap of all. Your opponent has discard attacks, and you think, aha, I can get tunnels, and then when they attack me, I will gain golds. The problem here is that gaining golds just isn't very good very often in this scenario. Essentially, what you are saying when you do this is, "If I gain enough Golds, my three card hands can beat you". Well, this is usually just a losing proposition. Of course, there are probably some exceptions, where there is just nothing to do, no way to draw, the game will be very long, and you can also leverage the victory part of the Tunnel. But these are going to be exceedingly rare, and for the most part, you would just rather be on the side of the attack, and in general, just having better stuff than a do-nothing green card. There is also, of course, no guarantee that any given hand gets attacked, so you have a pretty good chance of not getting your benefit - unless, of course, your opponent has built a consistent engine. In that case, though, you would almost always have been better served to build such an engine yourself! I will note that using Tunnel as a defense is probably more realistic in multiplayer, where you're much more likely to get attacked every turn - but I still wouldn't expect it to be good often.
I also don't have examples here, because I can't find any recent games of mine where anyone really did this. The word is more or less out now, at least at the high levels, but it wasn't always so, and you will still see quite a number of players falling for this idea.
The Headlong Rush for Gold-Flood
This one is ever-popular. The basic idea is to get Tunnels and enablers (discard outlets) en masse, to then acquire golds en masse, to then buy things. This strategy consistently gets way overrated. The first problem is that you need to get things to line up in the right order for this to work at all - and if you build it right, they usually will, but you're still hanging some non-trivial percentage for disaster. The next problem is that this is slow. First, you have to get Tunnels, which are cards that actively hurt your deck. The next shuffle, you get to start gaining gold, but you won't reap the benefits of that gold until the shuffle after that. So it takes a long time. Further compounding this, you actually need to get a lot of gold before you can do what you want. Typically, your enablers are going to leave you down a card. That means you'll need two gold and two copper in order to buy your province. It takes quite a lot of cards in order to get that set up reliably, even with sifting benefits. Keep in mind one alternative is always buy silver to buy gold, and that is going to be a lot easier on you to reach 8 coins in terms of needing golds. In order to alleviate this problem, you are going to need really exceptional enablers. The best by far are Storeroom and Embassy. They just let you see so many cards, and they provide additional economic benefits to lessen the burden of needing to get Gold Gold Copper Copper exactly. Even with these cards, the strategy is only a reasonably good baseline, not anything super amazing. Young Witch is another mention, but this is not because it's really a good enabler, but because the attack synergizes with the slog-like nature of the Gold Flood strategy to start with. With worse enablers, you should be quite leery indeed.
When you're building this deck, the emphasis should really be on the enablers far more than the Tunnels. The quick thing is that the enablers do something for your deck if they don't collide, whereas the Tunnels don't. They also accelerate your shuffles even when they 'miss', which is a big deal in this kind of deck. Furthermore, you just don't really need that many Tunnels. Getting a couple Golds per shuffle reliably and getting back round to them faster is simply a much bigger deal than potentially getting a higher number of golds per shuffle.
I have one example game here: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150611/log.50a94f0ce4b07a80ae66d119.1434063461261.txt
You'll see I focus on getting my Embassies up much moreso than the Tunnels, and it pays very good dividends (of course, I was also absurdly lucky here). My opponent actually also plays pretty well (perhaps his first Duchy should be another Embassy - in general this is true anyway - but it is hard to criticize as he is so far behind and clearly needs to get rather lucky to have a chance), and his draws are more reasonable as a baseline here.
Tunnel as Payload
This is something I don't see very often, but it's I think pretty significantly the best use of the card. The concept is pretty simple: you build up a big draw engine, then you use a Tunnel to gain Golds to use as the economic finish. The nice thing about this is that a lot of your enablers are cards you already want to grease the wheels of your engine, you can use a single Tunnel multiple times in a turn, and you can use all your buys going forward on engine pieces, without needing to waste any just making money. Also, because engines draw so much, the speed both at which you acquire golds and at which you are able to reap the benefits of them is quite high.
The key to playing this kind of deck is to get your engine up and running first, and add the Tunnel as a payload card. You also want to think about potentially limiting the activations of your tunnel - Gold is a card that is generally pretty good when it's free, but you don't always want more. It's important to keep your deck-size under control and your reliability up - and there's little point in making more money than you need. Furthermore, there are often going to be more opportunities on later turns.
Let's look at a couple of example games I played here:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430163648667.txt
Here, I get lots of enablers, because they will help get my engine firing anyway. I do take an early Tunnel and a couple of gold, as I need to get my economy up to get the Hunting Grounds I need. But I don't activate it every time, at least until I am getting into draw-my-deck territory. Because I have a high number of sifters, my deck is reliable, and when I get enough Hunting Grounds on-line, my deck explodes, closing out 6 Provinces over 2 turns.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150507/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1431010794761.txt
This game is a similar story. One Tunnel soon (in this case, I got to trash Hovel, which had me pulling the trigger sooner than I normally would). Pick up a forge to start coalescing, and then go to town. Forging extra Golds into Hunting Grounds is a big deal here, and while I do go a bit overboard in getting a zillion golds at the end (probably not really the best play), it doesn't really matter, as the game is just ending.
Thursday, 25 June 2015
Assert Your Dominance When Winning
One (of many) important skills in Dominion, as in a lot of games, is being able to win the won game with as high a probability as possible. Little feels worse than letting a game you were way ahead in slip through the cracks. Giving advice on this is generally very difficult for Dominion, as every board is different, and every situation is different. There are, however, some general pieces of advice to give, and then some examples to demonstrate good lines of thinking.
Be alert for ways to end the game
This can mean grabbing 50% of the VP, setting up an unbreakable pin, emptying Colonies, or emptying Provinces. These are things to be aware of, of course, but in general people are pretty good about looking for them (though you do still need to be vigilant, as they are missed sometimes). The bigger thing, though, is looking at 3 pile endings. You want to know what piles are low, how many, and what ways there are of emptying them as fast as possible. Keep an eye for gainers, especially multi-gainers, like Stonemason and Procession. Also keep an eye on Curses, Ruins (especially with Death Cart), and Estates.
Generally be aware of how close the end of the game is
You need to know whether you're planning for a long game or a short game. Missing wins is a common mistake that people make, but probably even more common is people panicking and going for points too soon. "Piles feel low" can make people scared. You need to be concrete. How low are they really? Are they actually going to be emptied? If it isn't going to be in one turn, can your opponent realistically make the play to go after them over multiple turns, or will that hurt their deck too much? Sometimes the answer is, yes, they can go for it. But lots of times, they can't really. How much you want to play around having a bad turn or two is a function of how reliable your deck is and how far ahead you are.
Know your role, and leverage your advantages
Are you ahead because you have a very large points lead that is going to be hard to overcome? Or is it because your deck is much better? When the former is true, you want to make sure that your opponent can't build up enough of an advantage in deck to overcome that. Generally this means you want to try to make the game short, though sometimes you keep your deck at a quality where you can still win the long game. Still other times you'll seek to 'cut their legs out' by attacking the piles they'd need for a comeback, which inhibits their ability to build (though I should warn that this is quite rare). When it's the latter, you want to make sure that this advantage will have the time and space to be developed and played out for your advantage. So play for the long game, and make sure you don't lose short. Of course, the most common way to lose short is by letting the game end short - and so you want to make the game go long, by not blitzing down the piles.
Ask yourself: How am I losing this game?
This is really the banner under which all the other things lie. Even the Penultimate Province Rule is just a piece of this line of thinking. This is the most difficult piece of advice to give with specificity. It varies very much from board to board, and from game to game. But when you're ahead, you need to know why you are ahead. What is it based on? And why is that important? You need to make sure that you try to make your advantages are important, and try to make sure that any advantages your opponents have are not. And look to mitigate the ability for a bad shuffle, or a perfect shuffle from your opponent, to knock you down. Sometimes that means building consistency. Sometimes it means just ending the game as fast as possible.
One final word of advice before I switch to examples: make sure that in your attempts to secure your position, you aren't losing so much time trying to be safe that you let the core of your advantage slip.
Now, on to examples!
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150424/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429907945889.txt
In this game, if we look at the position after turn 25, I have a superior quality deck. The way I lose the game is... to let that deck deteriorate. It doesn't take very much to lose reliability. I need to start sending lots of junk over, and I need to up my economy so I can by colonies, but the biggest thing that can shoot me down is losing my consistency - and so my Soothsayer, despite accomplishing the first two goals, is actually quite a bad purchase. If I sanely buy a gold, work my way up in money, and just buy a curse at some moment, I would have had plenty of time to set myself up without my deck ever getting too big. The way I played, I still had reasonable chances, but I gave myself way more chances to lose than were necessary, and it bit me.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150425/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429978545317.txt
This is a pretty classic Golden Deck game. I get myself set up on turn 11 or so. My opponent still has a little cleaning up to do, though at the precise moment he has a little tiny lead. Throughout the rest of this game, I just pound the Platinum into submission. The point here is that this way, my opponent simply has no counterplay, and the longer the game goes, the more non-perfect draws he will have, and I can continue my advantage. I could definitely have run the colonies out sooner, but there was just no need, as this way I extended my lead maximally.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150425/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429985222956.txt
Here we just look at the last turn. I have a small lead, and I am aware that 2 piles are out (Duchy and Market Square). I am in a good position, but there are of course lots of ways to lose - opponent can spike a Province or hit a Duchy, for instance. So while piling the Estates is very likely to lead me to a win, knowing that I can end it when I draw the Gold off Altar-ing my Overgrown Estate pays off - Death Cart and the ruins pile is a typical thing to watch for.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430164409576.txt
Another instance of pile awareness - here I lunge for the last curses
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430167943928.txt
Here, an awareness of my deck lets me know I can simply go for it to end it on turn 9(!) by... running the Provinces! Key was knowing that the last card was a silver so that I could draw it up and Forge a Province for the win.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150428/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430228157511.txt
Another example of knowing that I can get the Provinces out.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150601/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1433174993893.txt
Here, my trashing lets me build a pretty clean deck advantage over my opponent, with a reliable engine. I am able to catch up in points as well, getting me to the spot where I lead in all sectors. Then I apply the 'how am I losing this game' thought process. And the way I lose is to have my engine get unreliable - there is only one buy anyway, so extra money does nothing. Solution? Remake Silvers into engine components. This makes me super reliable, and I can take the points lead at leisure, only moving forward when safe and/or necessary.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150618/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1434639648661.txt
In this game, I get out to what I believed to be a big lead. However, my opponent was massing Governor pieces. Despite it being a Colony game, I asked myself how I was losing, and came up with my opponent emptying the Provinces. So I got 4 - my opponent doesn't have the capabilities to overcome me by catching up on Provinces himself, so after this play, I'm pretty comfortably in control.
Finally, a pair of Possession/Masquerade games. The key here is that, in both, the way to go is pretty clearly to get possessing your opponent set up, as the engines are good (this isn't always the case of course, but it is here). Given that, the way either player wins or loses is going to be... to stop your opponent from possessing you, at which point you can pretty much put the game away at leisure. Thus, when possessing them you make them pass... their possessions, first of all, then what lets them re-buy possession (usually potion), and only then their provinces. (Obviously, if the game is right about to end, you might have to make an exception).
In the first game, here, doing this efficiently nets me a quick resignation. But in the second, here, my opponent gives me many more cracks at the apple than necessary (which unfortunately for me, I miss on, but still, this is something to look at).
Be alert for ways to end the game
This can mean grabbing 50% of the VP, setting up an unbreakable pin, emptying Colonies, or emptying Provinces. These are things to be aware of, of course, but in general people are pretty good about looking for them (though you do still need to be vigilant, as they are missed sometimes). The bigger thing, though, is looking at 3 pile endings. You want to know what piles are low, how many, and what ways there are of emptying them as fast as possible. Keep an eye for gainers, especially multi-gainers, like Stonemason and Procession. Also keep an eye on Curses, Ruins (especially with Death Cart), and Estates.
Generally be aware of how close the end of the game is
You need to know whether you're planning for a long game or a short game. Missing wins is a common mistake that people make, but probably even more common is people panicking and going for points too soon. "Piles feel low" can make people scared. You need to be concrete. How low are they really? Are they actually going to be emptied? If it isn't going to be in one turn, can your opponent realistically make the play to go after them over multiple turns, or will that hurt their deck too much? Sometimes the answer is, yes, they can go for it. But lots of times, they can't really. How much you want to play around having a bad turn or two is a function of how reliable your deck is and how far ahead you are.
Know your role, and leverage your advantages
Are you ahead because you have a very large points lead that is going to be hard to overcome? Or is it because your deck is much better? When the former is true, you want to make sure that your opponent can't build up enough of an advantage in deck to overcome that. Generally this means you want to try to make the game short, though sometimes you keep your deck at a quality where you can still win the long game. Still other times you'll seek to 'cut their legs out' by attacking the piles they'd need for a comeback, which inhibits their ability to build (though I should warn that this is quite rare). When it's the latter, you want to make sure that this advantage will have the time and space to be developed and played out for your advantage. So play for the long game, and make sure you don't lose short. Of course, the most common way to lose short is by letting the game end short - and so you want to make the game go long, by not blitzing down the piles.
Ask yourself: How am I losing this game?
This is really the banner under which all the other things lie. Even the Penultimate Province Rule is just a piece of this line of thinking. This is the most difficult piece of advice to give with specificity. It varies very much from board to board, and from game to game. But when you're ahead, you need to know why you are ahead. What is it based on? And why is that important? You need to make sure that you try to make your advantages are important, and try to make sure that any advantages your opponents have are not. And look to mitigate the ability for a bad shuffle, or a perfect shuffle from your opponent, to knock you down. Sometimes that means building consistency. Sometimes it means just ending the game as fast as possible.
One final word of advice before I switch to examples: make sure that in your attempts to secure your position, you aren't losing so much time trying to be safe that you let the core of your advantage slip.
Now, on to examples!
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150424/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429907945889.txt
In this game, if we look at the position after turn 25, I have a superior quality deck. The way I lose the game is... to let that deck deteriorate. It doesn't take very much to lose reliability. I need to start sending lots of junk over, and I need to up my economy so I can by colonies, but the biggest thing that can shoot me down is losing my consistency - and so my Soothsayer, despite accomplishing the first two goals, is actually quite a bad purchase. If I sanely buy a gold, work my way up in money, and just buy a curse at some moment, I would have had plenty of time to set myself up without my deck ever getting too big. The way I played, I still had reasonable chances, but I gave myself way more chances to lose than were necessary, and it bit me.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150425/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429978545317.txt
This is a pretty classic Golden Deck game. I get myself set up on turn 11 or so. My opponent still has a little cleaning up to do, though at the precise moment he has a little tiny lead. Throughout the rest of this game, I just pound the Platinum into submission. The point here is that this way, my opponent simply has no counterplay, and the longer the game goes, the more non-perfect draws he will have, and I can continue my advantage. I could definitely have run the colonies out sooner, but there was just no need, as this way I extended my lead maximally.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150425/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429985222956.txt
Here we just look at the last turn. I have a small lead, and I am aware that 2 piles are out (Duchy and Market Square). I am in a good position, but there are of course lots of ways to lose - opponent can spike a Province or hit a Duchy, for instance. So while piling the Estates is very likely to lead me to a win, knowing that I can end it when I draw the Gold off Altar-ing my Overgrown Estate pays off - Death Cart and the ruins pile is a typical thing to watch for.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430164409576.txt
Another instance of pile awareness - here I lunge for the last curses
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430167943928.txt
Here, an awareness of my deck lets me know I can simply go for it to end it on turn 9(!) by... running the Provinces! Key was knowing that the last card was a silver so that I could draw it up and Forge a Province for the win.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150428/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430228157511.txt
Another example of knowing that I can get the Provinces out.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150601/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1433174993893.txt
Here, my trashing lets me build a pretty clean deck advantage over my opponent, with a reliable engine. I am able to catch up in points as well, getting me to the spot where I lead in all sectors. Then I apply the 'how am I losing this game' thought process. And the way I lose is to have my engine get unreliable - there is only one buy anyway, so extra money does nothing. Solution? Remake Silvers into engine components. This makes me super reliable, and I can take the points lead at leisure, only moving forward when safe and/or necessary.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150618/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1434639648661.txt
In this game, I get out to what I believed to be a big lead. However, my opponent was massing Governor pieces. Despite it being a Colony game, I asked myself how I was losing, and came up with my opponent emptying the Provinces. So I got 4 - my opponent doesn't have the capabilities to overcome me by catching up on Provinces himself, so after this play, I'm pretty comfortably in control.
Finally, a pair of Possession/Masquerade games. The key here is that, in both, the way to go is pretty clearly to get possessing your opponent set up, as the engines are good (this isn't always the case of course, but it is here). Given that, the way either player wins or loses is going to be... to stop your opponent from possessing you, at which point you can pretty much put the game away at leisure. Thus, when possessing them you make them pass... their possessions, first of all, then what lets them re-buy possession (usually potion), and only then their provinces. (Obviously, if the game is right about to end, you might have to make an exception).
In the first game, here, doing this efficiently nets me a quick resignation. But in the second, here, my opponent gives me many more cracks at the apple than necessary (which unfortunately for me, I miss on, but still, this is something to look at).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)