Here's the problem though. 95% probability to work. Not disagreeing. But you know why? Because the chance of actually drawing that lone splash card is low. So your ultimate result is a low result of failure - not because the card is reliably castable but because it's reliably not-drawable.
And if it's a card that absolutely must be cast early, having a low land count to support it is just going to be epic fail. Anytime you do draw that card, you'll most likely be without mana to cast it. It's a dead card. And you can see that in the link you posted. Just look at the far right of the table. If you had 24 cards instead of 1, your opening hand would fail you 40% of the time (with 7 lands). That's terrible.
Most of the time, you are going to be much better off dropping that single card splash and running another on-color card (unless the single card splash is Recurring Nightmare I guess). It simply isn't worth it in the vast majority of scenarios. I know it seems harmless to toss in that lone splash, but it's not. It's just jacking up your deck's consistency for very little ROI.
First off, usually a splash is for some kind of gain. Colors have weaknesses, and those holes can be filled with other colors. As an example based in previous discussion, the
Thought-Knot Seer can provide valuable hand control for some sort of
/
long-game deck that would otherwise miss it, while also giving them a useful body. So splashing can definitely be a valuable thing to do (to wit: greater than "very little ROI"). I think (hope) the majority of people will agree with me.
I fail to see the basis of your argument, honestly. It seems to be: "Not 100%? Won't work." Yeah, well, that's true of everything in magic. It's also a mega fail when you are playing a tight
mana base, and only draw one
source the whole game and can't cast half your spells, or when you get mana screwed. Is there a percentage cutoff you've developed in your head for acceptance criteria? Was it in playtesting? It's greater than 95%??
Furthermore, it seems to me that you are simply not understanding what the 95% means, or what the table means in general. It means, 95% of the time, you will be able to cast your single spell. You will have the land before the spell. And not only in the late game, but by the time you'd first need it.
Anytime you do draw that card, you'll most likely be without mana to cast it. It's a dead card.
(Bolding mine) Like, this above statement is just basely false. The article is literally disproving it.
Every now and then you will be stuck with the splash in hand (about 5% on 7 sources). Hopefully the drafter's deck is constructed well enough to not fall apart because of this, can make a course correction, and maybe a couple turns later use the splash. Or maybe it will lose. Playing magic opens up that chance no matter what.
Just look at the far right of the table. If you had 24 cards instead of 1, your opening hand would fail you 40% of the time (with 7 lands). That's terrible.
This section only seems to support the supposition that you aren't applying the table correctly. If I was playing 24
cards I'd want to probably make it a major part of my mana base (no longer a splash). Conveniently, the table shows me an acceptable percentage of failure at 16 lands, which is the number a 40 card deck could hold with 24 nonlands already in it. Perfect! In another case, having 3 cards in a splash color is perfectly reasonable for limited. At 3 we see that we want 10 sources for
turn 1 mana success. This, if anything, proves that a
solid splash should be better supported then a
1-off splash, and a
major deck color should be better supported than any splash. Seems MTG 101 to me, tbh.
Long and the short of it is: I see what you are trying to get at, but you seem to be applying what you feel would happen, and how horrible it would feel, along with misapplying information from an article dealing with mathematics. Mathematics that, frankly, aren't on your side.
