General Current opinion on duplicates and other Riptidian/Waddellisms?

[sigh]

I prefer siren stormtamer in this slot. It fits into a variety of decks with high-priority creatures that benefit from protection. This can be the Young Pyromancer/Monastery Monk of a spell deck, or a beefcake finisher in a reanimator deck. Much more versatile in that way.

I do actually run a delver right now as well, to be clear, and I will probably be switching to Pteramander. It's more consistent and fits into a graveyard cube better. Win-win in my book.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Pteramander has been a lot better for me than Delver of Secrets, and I ran Delver in a cube that was way more geared towards enabling it than my cube was ever geared towards Pteramander. Pteramander has multiple advantages over Delver, I feel, that make it a better cube card, even though Delver's ceiling is slightly higher. One, it has evasion right off the bat. Two, it's a way better top deck. Unlike Delver, Pteramander actually benefits from instants and sorceries you drew/cast before drawing the payoff card itself. Three, Pteramander is a lot better when you're not drawing the instants and sorceries at the right time, since even making it a 5/5 flyer without a lot of discount still makes it a scary attacker, whereas you're just stuck with a silly 1/1 if you're not drawing the instants and sorceries at the right time with Delver. I would easily add additional copies of Pteramander before even considering the first Delver, based on my own experiences with both.

I used to run two Cloudfin Raptors, which honestly is a great aggro/tempo drop for a color that doesn't have that many good one-drops. Great with proliferate and ninja's as well, if you're interested in that.

 

[Erik Twice]

I really like Looter il-Kor as a duplicate. I think replacing your Merfolk Looter with a second copy of it is a plain improvement. They are pretty much the same card except playable in more archetypes.

Either way, nothing has improved my cube more than moving two double fetches.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Double fetches is the truth
The only time merfolk looter is better than il-kor is if you're running madness cards, circular logic especially, but even running out a fiery temper at the correct time is likely more important than the 1 damage.

As for delver, I think pteramander is a lot more applicable. If we take the utterly unrealistic idea of 3 delvers, 17 lands, and 20 spells (a likely untenable deck, literally only 3 threats), flipping delver is a coinflip; 50/50
Maybe running a 12 land limited deck bumps those numbers up, maybe you get all 4 brainstorms and get to feel smart, but the card in it's design is basically a coinflip. Even if that coin is 60/40, is that really a card you want to run? Especially when there's a similar card that is based on gameplay and not randomness?

Siren stormtamer is good in conjunction with pterry/delver/young pyromancer, but I wouldn't replace any of those threats with it

 

[Brad]

I double almost all my one drops because I'd rather have a cool one drop than "I just need a 2/1." I once tried to run a cube with a lot of multiples and disliked how arbitrary my design constraints were. It occasionally gave me a feeling where it seemed like I may as well load up on 10 of Card A because it's so much better in a role than Card B, and I didn't like that at all, personally.

The only downside to using Pteramander is that you can run, but you can't hide, bitch! But that can be an upside, as well.

 

[Velrun]

Arguments like ‘It is random’ got outdated in 1999.

Magic is, by default, a random game about statistics where you can optimize your chances of winning by working with those statistical numbers.

A 3/2 flying beater by turn 2 is far better than a 1/1 flying beater that can adapt much, much later in the game. However there is a downside: You have to flip it on first attempt. Delver is also a lot stronger if you flip it on second attempt. We can argue how late Delver should flip in order for it to be the weaker deck choice but we cannot argue that it is a bad card to include because of ‘randomness’ or ‘coinflip’. You can’t even begin a match of Magic without a coinflip.

My personal opinion is that I think a Delver sitting on the board doing nothing and then flipping in your third upkeep is good enough. That means I need 33 % non-creature spells and 67 % creature spells among all non-land cards in the deck. I would argue cards like Monastery Mentor, Young Pyromancer, Pteramander need about the same distribution.

However with Eldraine that has changed a little bit. Triggering prowess and Pyro works with Adventures but they won’t trigger Delver or stack up for Scary Terry.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Arguments like ‘It is random’ got outdated in 1999.

Magic is, by default, a random game about statistics where you can optimize your chances of winning by working with those statistical numbers.

A 3/2 flying beater by turn 2 is far better than a 1/1 flying beater that can adapt much, much later in the game. However there is a downside: You have to flip it on first attempt. Delver is also a lot stronger if you flip it on second attempt. We can argue how late Delver should flip in order for it to be the weaker deck choice but we cannot argue that it is a bad card to include because of ‘randomness’ or ‘coinflip’. You can’t even begin a match of Magic without a coinflip.

My personal opinion is that I think a Delver sitting on the board doing nothing and then flipping in your third upkeep is good enough. That means I need 33 % non-creature spells and 67 % creature spells among all non-land cards in the deck. I would argue cards like Monastery Mentor, Young Pyromancer, Pteramander need about the same distribution.

However with Eldraine that has changed a little bit. Triggering prowess and Pyro works with Adventures but they won’t trigger Delver or stack up for Scary Terry.

I would argue, however, that the difference between something like a Young Pyromancer and a Delver of Secrets is when they gain value from a spell.

If your opening hand has 3 instants, a Young Pyromancer, and 3 lands, then Pyromancer is for sure getting 3 triggers that game provided it doesn't die. Delver of Secrets, on the other hand, would not necessarily flip in this same position. In fact, delver would be at a disadvantage in a starting hand with 3 instants because it would have fewer cards in the deck to trigger it.

I also think that Delver's randomness is slightly different from other card's randomness. Delver always feels like a coinflip in the sense that you don't know whats coming next without TOD manipulation. "Bad luck" is a feeling that can be put front and center with Delver of Secrets. To be fair, any magic game can be ruined by so-called bad luck, but it's a lot less apparent in the course of a regular game. Not drawing an instant for 3 turns after playing Young Pyromancer is arguably almost as bad if not worse than not flipping a spell for 3 turns off of a delver, but since Pyromancer has a cast trigger instead of a upkeep trigger, the player isn't constantly reminded of not having their engine online. I don't have much of experience with Scary Pterry, but I think he probably falls into the same camp as pyromancer.

Basically, Delver randomness feels bad, man.

 

[Velrun]

I would argue, however, that the difference between something like a Young Pyromancer and a Delver of Secrets is when they gain value from a spell.

If your opening hand has 3 instants, a Young Pyromancer, and 3 lands, then Pyromancer is for sure getting 3 triggers that game provided it doesn't die. Delver of Secrets, on the other hand, would not necessarily flip in this same position. In fact, delver would be at a disadvantage in a starting hand with 3 instants because it would have fewer cards in the deck to trigger it.

I also think that Delver's randomness is slightly different from other card's randomness. Delver always feels like a coinflip in the sense that you don't know whats coming next without TOD manipulation. "Bad luck" is a feeling that can be put front and center with Delver of Secrets. To be fair, any magic game can be ruined by so-called bad luck, but it's a lot less apparent in the course of a regular game. Not drawing an instant for 3 turns after playing Young Pyromancer is arguably almost as bad if not worse than not flipping a spell for 3 turns off of a delver, but since Pyromancer has a cast trigger instead of a upkeep trigger, the player isn't constantly reminded of not having their engine online. I don't have much of experience with Scary Pterry, but I think he probably falls into the same camp as pyromancer.

Basically, Delver randomness feels bad, man.

That is not how we normally do statistics. You cannot control the output like that. You took one example of a hand with 1 Young Pyromancer, 3 instants and 2 or more lands. If you go down this route, then you will have to go through every example there is which also includes scenarios that are not in ‘your favor’.

Of course 3 instants in hand will be good for Young Pyromancer and bad for Delver. How about 0 in hand and 9 in the library? Probably the opposite.

Therefore you cannot control the output. What you can work with, however, is your statistical chance of having an instant or sorcery on the top of your library. You do this in deck construction. To be exactly clear: You cannot control how many spells you have in your opening hand but you can control how many spells you include in your deck.

Above are facts. Below are opinions.

I agree that Delver can lead to some feel-bad moments for both players. It believe it is a very skill intense card but not in the way that people normally look at a card because half of the skill testing happen before the games begin.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I believe the point TrainmasterGT was making, is that spells in hand are good for Pyromancer but bad for Delver, while spells in deck are good for both. The chances of not drawing any instants and sorceries in your opener aren't that high, either. Their scenario isn't that unlikely from a statistics perspective. Let's use https://www.dcode.fr/picking-probabilities though. Say you run a spell heavy deck, with 13 instants and sorceries, and lets ignore mana distribution for the sake of simplicity. Now let P(n) be the chance to draw n instants and/or sorceries in your opening 7.

P(0) = 4.8%
P(1) = 20.6%
P(2) = 33.8%
P(3) = 26.9%
P(4) = 11.2%

Looking beyond P(4) isn't really useful, since you're looking at a hand of at most 2 lands and no creatures. Of course, now we can calculate the odds of flipping Delver from those base scenario's. Let's call the odds Fn(o), where n is the number of spells in your opener, and o is the number of draws since you played Delver (on turn 1).

P2(1) = 33.3% (i.e. given that you started on the play with a hand with Delver and two instants and/or sorceries, if you play that Delver, the chance to flip it on the following turn is one in three).
P2(2) = this is more complicated and I have to go to work, but essentially you have to calculate the compound odds of not flipping the Delver on the first turn and flipping it on the second turn.

I'll gladly wait for someone with more time on their hands to present me with the whole table of odds.

 

[Velrun]

Thanks for putting numbers to the discussion <3

It also exactly reveals my point that you need a deck with 33 % instants/sorceries in order to function the way I want it to. And that is the reason why I do not think Delver is a trap if you build your cube for it. However it also reveals that Delver will be a trap if you do not build your cube with that in mind. And finally a deck with 33 % ‘spells’ will work really well with Monastery Mentor, Young Pyromancer and Pteramander.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Here's a nice link that can give you some more insight with a bit of diligence: https://deckulator.appspot.com/

 

[safra]

lmao if you aren't just writing R programs to run a hundred thousand trials of anything that bothers you

 

[dbs]

lmao if you aren't just writing R programs to run a hundred thousand trials of anything that bothers you

why work out the distribution when you can do monte carlo lets go

 

[Felipe Budinich]

why work out the distribution when you can do monte carlo lets go

In my field of work you can see how easy it is to convince someone when you say "We ran 1 bajillion simulations and it matches the field data we collected" versus "It's a normal distribution and it matches the field data we collected".