General Life Gain as a Thing

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
an UW 2-drop isn't easier to cast than a WW one, wtf

I think you need to calm down there sailor, because you're pretty blatantly wrong. Grossly so. Let's take a simplifying assumption and say we have a two-color deck with an equal number of basics of each color. Further assume that we only have two lands in hand. Our land drops can be modelled as a basic punnet square:

mYWOHom.gif


Well, almost. See, in a deck, there are a finite number of lands, meaning that if you're first land is a plains, the probability of your second land being a plains is reduced.

Even disregarding this, you'll have the mana for an AB spell on Turn 2 about twice as often as an AA spell. Sure, you can question the assumption of equally distributed two-color decks, but unless you move extremely towards the monocolored end of the spectrum this will still hold. Duals obviously complicate the situation, but the basic concepts still apply.

Further, let's take a look at Sejiri Merfolk.



Oh, he doesn't even need white to be cast! That means, 3 of our 4 Punnett Square options cast him (AA, AB, BA), and one doesn't (BB). True, he's not great as a piker, but we do have until the third turn to get him online, meaning we can even do silly stuff like play our third land as a tapped Hallowed Fountain.

Lastly, I would say that, disregarding punctuation and presenting your argument as though you are assuredly correct, along with the requisite "wtf", does not in fact make said argument true.

I believe you owe Mr. Bonzo an apology. :)
 
Is paying life part of this? I hardly ever want to play a black deck these days without either serious inevitability or lifegain (I feel like many good black cards cost you life or leave you open).

There have been a number of times I felt at liberty to get super ambitious with my sylvan library because I made such a good show of having incidental lifegain.

If you are like Eric or some others and your mana base does a lot of damage to you, you feel like lifegain is absolutely a thing that enables your multicolour deck.
 

CML

Contributor
I think you need to calm down there sailor, because you're pretty blatantly wrong. Grossly so. Let's take a simplifying assumption and say we have a two-color deck with an equal number of basics of each color. Further assume that we only have two lands in hand. Our land drops can be modelled as a basic punnet square:

mYWOHom.gif


Well, almost. See, in a deck, there are a finite number of lands, meaning that if you're first land is a plains, the probability of your second land being a plains is reduced.

Even disregarding this, you'll have the mana for an AB spell on Turn 2 about twice as often as an AA spell. Sure, you can question the assumption of equally distributed two-color decks, but unless you move extremely towards the monocolored end of the spectrum this will still hold. Duals obviously complicate the situation, but the basic concepts still apply.

Further, let's take a look at Sejiri Merfolk.



Oh, he doesn't even need white to be cast! That means, 3 of our 4 Punnett Square options cast him (AA, AB, BA), and one doesn't (BB). True, he's not great as a piker, but we do have until the third turn to get him online, meaning we can even do silly stuff like play our third land as a tapped Hallowed Fountain.

Lastly, I would say that, disregarding punctuation and presenting your argument as though you are assuredly correct, along with the requisite "wtf", does not in fact make said argument true.

I believe you owe Mr. Bonzo an apology. :)


yeah, if the deck is UW this is clearly true. but the "any white deck can cast it / only UW can" factor clearly outweighs that.

I WILL OUT PEDANT YOU SIR!!
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
yeah, if the deck is UW this is clearly true. but the "any white deck can cast it / only UW can" factor clearly outweighs that.

I WILL OUT PEDANT YOU SIR!!

"Any white deck can cast it" is technically true, but also a huge misnomer... uh, well, there are lots of decks (say, WGu) that would be far more interested in a 1U spell than a WW spell.

Not to mention this thing is totally sweet. Play it on T2 with no Plains. T3, play a fetchland pre-combat, swing. Do you block? Do I have a Plains to fetch?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Is paying life part of this? I hardly ever want to play a black deck these days without either serious inevitability or lifegain (I feel like many good black cards cost you life or leave you open).

There have been a number of times I felt at liberty to get super ambitious with my sylvan library because I made such a good show of having incidental lifegain.

If you are like Eric or some others and your mana base does a lot of damage to you, you feel like lifegain is absolutely a thing that enables your multicolour deck.

I think multicolor decks are already super playable without overloading on lifegain, and Bob decks usually don't kill themselves, but Lifegain Library could be a real thing, I think.
 

CML

Contributor
Bob decks are masters of brinksmanship.

Yeah, WW is fairly restrictive but I don't think it's quite as restrictive as a two-color 2-drop. DO YOU YIELD?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
After some testing, Pridemates indeed get huge, but they have difficulty pushing through damage at times because they just get chumped for days. Rancor and Kessig Wolf Run helped in my Naya build, but the BW build ran into trouble.

Zuran Orb was the most fun card of the archetype to play with.

I wish the one-drop supporting cast were better. The Champions almost never triggered, but maybe that was just due to the decks in question.

Gerrard's Verdict was fine, but maybe Tithe Drinker is better as it gives more lifegain triggers.

Obzedat was a house.

The big question was how to keep it from just being a linear beatdown deck. There were decisions to be made, but I don't think the quality of mechanical gameplay is as high as the Gravecrawler decks. Not that it needs to be, but I wouldn't mind finding ways for more tricks and lines.
 
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