Dies to Removal

http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/h ... etric.aspx

I've bookmark marked that link (thanks), I'm a cup half full type of guy so I always try to get a positive spin on low hand gambles which is I why I would have preferred to look at that hand and think to myself "hell, I have a >89% chance of hitting the 2nd land and if I do, I'll have something to cast every turn while i wait for lands 3-4".

That said I'll mull 4-5 lands hands without a 2nd thought... since with Burn its better to have gas then no gas esp. in a format like standard where you don't just die in T1-3.

I can't remember who (read it early in the morning before work) but someone said that against MBC you need to mulligan hands like "5 land, 2 spells" because of discard; that is so faulty; you can't mulligan because of discard, that's a horrible idea.

While I do agree mulling to avoid discard is a logic fail however keeping a 5 lander is just wrong (unless you have phoenix or something and even then its risky).

On the statistics issue: If you think I have an 89% chance to rip a land off the top when I have 22 lands left in the deck, I can walk you through the calculation. The odds to miss on the first draw are (53-22)/53 or .585. The odds to miss on the second draw are (52-22)/52 or .577. The odds of both of these events happening is .585 * .577 or .338. That leaves me with a 33.8% chance of not drawing a land by turn 3! The odds of not drawing a land by turn 4 are 19.19%. So almost 20% of the time, I will have done about exactly nothing in the first 4 turns if I kept that hand, and I have over a 50% chance to miss my second land drop, over a 30% chance to ALSO miss my 3rd land drop, and almost a 20% chance to ALSO miss my 4th land drop! These are terrible odds. Don't keep one-landers unless it's scryland + Magma Jet, which increases your odds to 66.2% of hitting your second land drop naturally and about 81% chance to hit your 2nd
land by turn 3. On the draw this rises significantly.

While I do agree mulling to avoid discard is a logic fail however keeping a 5 lander is just wrong (unless you have phoenix or something and even then its risky).

I am pretty sure that against MBC it is still wrong to mulligan here.

And MDU, think about it this way: You had an 89.5% chance to hit your second land drop before drawing your starting seven, not after. If you have a one-lander, the above probabilities apply. That's actually how the hypergeometric distribution works, and it's easy enough to approximate your chances of drawing an out within two turns. The key is to calculate your chance of missing and multiply it by your chance of missing for every draw you can theoretically have available. With the amount of time Zem takes on plays while he's making videos, he could calculate these statistics on a calculator and be sure what his outs are as well, but this is somewhat time-consuming and you have to calculate the possible outs as well.

http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/h ... etric.aspx

I've bookmark marked that link (thanks), I'm a cup half full type of guy so I always try to get a positive spin on low hand gambles which is I why I would have preferred to look at that hand and think to myself "hell, I have a >89% chance of hitting the 2nd land and if I do, I'll have something to cast every turn while i wait for lands 3-4".

But that's not the way it works.

Think of it this way . . . the probability of flipping a coin to heads 10 times in a row is about 0.1%. Now, let's
say you just flipped 9 heads in a row. What's the probability of the next toss being heads? Well? What you're doing with the land calculation is equivalent to saying: "Well, since there's only a 0.1% chance I'll toss heads 10 times in a row, and since I tossed heads 9 times, that means there's a 99.9% chance I'm going to toss tails." Of course, each event has to be taken on its own. So, no matter how many times you toss heads, you still have a 50/50 probability of the next being heads.

Try it. Build a 53 card deck with 22 lands and see how many times you top deck a land.

The key to that 89% are the words "at least" 2 lands in 8 cards. That includes all the draws you get 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 lands in your first 8 cards.

If you keep a 1-land hand, 58% of the time you won't draw a land on T2.

Darn, now I can't trick myself into keeping 1-landers (thanks for wake-up call) ....I still keep the one lander if I have at least 2 1cc spells... because I'm greedy like that....

While I do agree mulling to avoid discard is a logic fail however keeping a 5 lander is just wrong (unless you have phoenix or something and even then its risky).

With 4x Thoughtseize and 4x Duress, there's a 70% chance they'll have at least 1 in their first 8 cards, and a 47% chance they'll draw at least 2 in their first 10 cards.

So there's a good chance you'll have 5 lands and 1 spell.

Darn, now I can't trick myself into keeping 1-landers (thanks for wake-up call) ....I still keep the one lander if I have at least 2 1cc spells... because I'm greedy like that....

When it works, it's awesome. Course, better hope Z doesn't board in Peak Eruption. lol

Opponent: "you're so fucking lucky, I draw 10 lands and you draw less and all these spells"

Me "you're playing a 26 land deck and I cast three Magma Jet"

While I do agree mulling to avoid discard is a logic fail however keeping a 5 lander is just wrong (unless you have phoenix or something and even then its risky).

I am pretty sure that against MBC it is still wrong to mulligan here.

Hmmm.... I know that in theory if you have 5 lands in your opening the odds that you will hit more lands are lower, but if your not doing anything against the MBC players in the earlier turns you'll just die (esp. if the black staff catches on) - I'll argue mulling for at least 3 actions cards, with the only exception of having
phoenix with your 5 lander.

OK so he drew 9 lands, 11 spells (he counted wrong haha), which isn't great, but in a 26 land deck on turn 14, that isn't that bad. Almost like Scry 2 is insanely powerful as games go long.

The $5k I attended on Saturday was literally infested with Burn players. I played against 3 before dropping in round 5, and my friend played against 4 before dropping in round 5.

Oddly enough, none of them seemed to be doing too well. Last I checked, mono blue and Esper Control were taking the top spots. I will say one thing though, none of the Burn players I faced had DTR style Sideboards. It looked like they all netdecked a 2 week old list or something. Saw lots of Firstblades and Firedancers in peoples sideboards, even 1 with Reckoners.

RW Burn is taking hold, and I'd expect to see even more at all the big events coming up.

It isn't a deck you can just pick up and play well. I make a LOT of mistakes and i've probably played more matches with the deck than anyone, anywhere. I'd argue its the hardest deck to play with technical acumen in the format.

Opponent's board: Mountain, Nykthos
Me: turn 3, peak eruption your mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCKjctTWIsw

"Oh, that's a nice Mountain you have there... Peak Eruption on that mountain."

Lol. GP Phoenix this weekend. We likely need to adjust the 75 to help that match-up. Esper, MBD, MUD are good match-ups, Monsters and the mirror are average. How can we adjust to make it better? I really don't want to creature the mirror when people are still running Searing Blood.

Play 3-4 PE hit them on curve then proceed to profit... run the 3rd and 4th Boros Guildgate to counter DtR member playing PE, while cutting chains R2-3

what matchups does assemble come in?

Mono-Black mostly

what matchups does assemble come in?

Not sure if trolling.

lol. im serious though.

What happened in GP Beijing Top 8? Really nervous for this GP. Biggest event I've attended. States and qualifiers are the next!

do i need to post in the strategy and theory about playing some of the finer points on this deck or are some of my questions welcomed here?

What happened in GP Beijing Top 8? Really nervous for this GP. Biggest event I've attended. States and qualifiers are the next!

I know your feels. Beijing top 8 consisted of 3 MBC, Esper Midrange, 3 R/W burn decks, and Blue Devotion Aggro. Two of the 3 RW lists are pretty much found on here/Z's articles while a third is a variatio. Splashing black for toil//trouble.

Still trying to find a solid list myself for the GP but its good to see the original list doing amazing still.

do i need to post in the strategy and theory about playing some of the finer points on this deck or are some of my questions welcomed here?

It is not they are not welcomed but rule of thumb around these parts is to dig around the thread to get the answer you need. The Assembled question has been answered.

Darn, now I can't trick myself into keeping 1-landers (thanks for wake-up call) ....I still keep the one lander if I have at least 2 1cc spells... because I'm greedy like that....

I literally LOL'd at the fine print...because I'd probably do the same thing.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28 ... otice.html
Thoughts? I kinda like his take on it and will be testing out different variants on it for a bit myself

I actually REALLY enjoyed the article, that dude knows what's up.

After more testing, updated decklist (thanks to dejection for the irl testing assistance):

[deck=Zemanjaski's Boros Burn]
Creatures
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Young Pyromancer

Enchantments
3 Chained to the Rocks

Instants
4 Boros Charm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
3 Searing Blood
3 Shock
4 Skullcrack
4 Warleader's Helix

Lands
2 Boros Guildgate
10 Mountain
3 Mutavault
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph

Sideboard
2 Assemble the Legion
1 Chained to the Rocks
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
4 Firedrinker Satyr
1 Glare of Heresy
2 Mizzium Mortars
3 Peak Eruption
1 Spark Trooper
[/deck]

I'm liking
this list Z. After seeing the GP results I was thinking it's probably time for Searing Blood to come back; it seems pretty well positioned at the moment. I was apparently too late to bring up Peak Eruption here. Oh well, at least I was on the right track.

I think no maindeck Chains is probably wrong; YP is much more vulnerable to cards like Courser and Polukranos; and they're extremely popular in the USA.

I do think his analysis of the manabase is pretty accurate though. Whether or not forgoing the 1 drop plan is a good idea is open for debate, but I certainly will be considering his approach because it is well thought out and argued.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28 ... otice.html
Thoughts? I kinda like his take on it and will be testing out different variants on it for a bit myself

I thought it was a good read. I disagree (as I'm sure we all do) on his overall assessment of [card]Toil // Trouble[/card]. A friend of mine has been pushing me to run this in the SB for about a month now. He believes in living the T3 [mana]2R[/mana]: deal 7 dream big time. The card is just bad against any current non-control deck. Strangely, I'd give it more consideration if it were Sudden Impact even though it's a higher CMC. I know there's been some debate recently
about Burning Earth and I've found that card to be underwhelming as well. My experience has been that having a more hyper-aggressive approach to Esper (or any control really) opponents has given me a greater probability of success against them.

I am actually running a different art mountain for my 10th; going to track whether it would be relevant as Mutavault or Boros Guildgate. Time to actually just know; will track over 100 games and report data.

I do the same thing thing.

OK, so I have been tracking whether my 23rd land should be any of: Mountain, Mutavault, Temple of Silence or Temple of Malice. The 23rd land was the 10th Mountain.

After 35 games (not the largest sample size), I found that I *never* once needed it to be specifically Mountain; in the seven times that I drew it, it would have been better as Mutavault 6 times and Temple of Silence once. Every time it would have been better as Mutavault, it was because I had my colours and a land that can attack is kinda sweet.

That isn't really enough data to be making definitive statements about the 23rd land, but it does suggest to me that we can include a single extra value land in the mana base:
- Mutavault has the highest value as a stand alone card, but in some circumstances you can't activate it and the value of scry 1 is actually higher.
- Mutavault is still kinda crappy in multiples, I think I will explore the more
conservative option of the extra scryland ~ temple of silence from my intuition ~ because having 1 additional source of scry AND 1 additional white source sound very appealing to me.

Will now commence testing with Temple of Silence and report data on that selection. I will be especially interested to see how many, if any, games it costs me when I am on the 1-drop plan.

If anyone else would be willing to do the same and report back, or even offer an opinion on my analysis, that would be appreciated. This is my favourite kind of testing.

Even a mana base that looks like:

1 Boros Guildgate
9 Mountain
3 Mutavault
4 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Triumph

*might* be workable, but I like the consistency offered by Boros Guildgate; after all, Silence and Malice would be included over Plains and Mountain respectively, so you do want your duals to typically tap for 2-colours.

Im actually amused testing the idea from the article about using a temple of enlightenment as a 1-of random white scry land just for the confusion you can cause. Its already gotten some good looks in my testing group