to try one last swerve back towards constructed conversation:
grillo, you said a few places that ponder is a fine T1 play (without shuffling). that's my biggest disagreement here. we're still playing limited, and not the vault-key or T2 iona kind usually. hands are often fairly crappy, and digging for one card -- ponder's biggest strength by far -- i think is much less useful in the early game than the general selection of preordain for when you want to just hit land drops, or just have any castable spells. if i have two lands in my opener and see one land in the top three with my T1 ponder, if i don't shuffle as the spell resolves i'm guaranteeing that i miss my fourth land drop. or, whatever similar situation for a land-heavy hand.
or late-game, if you're losing to a
dauthi marauder and ponder into removal-crap-crap ("crap" i.e. extra lands, outclassed creatures, etc)... if you want the answer to your current on-board problem, you're drawing two crap cards next. of course sometimes it'll be crap-crap-crap, and ponder will shuffle itself into the best possible card. i just don't think that situation is as frequently encountered or as useful as preordain's reliability at every point in the game.
ponder is skill-testing, and does cool things for tempo and sequencing. but preordain makes people not lose MTG games for crappy random luck, and that's why it's my preferred card in this slot.
Ok, thats more reasonable.
I'll admit my background with ponder comes mostly from delver. That deck tends to run 17 lands, and its common to keep 1 landers, or otherwise somewhat flawed lands, on the basis that with x4 ponder and x4 preordain, you can find whatever your missing piece is.
I pretty regularly will shoot off a turn 1 preordain or ponder (though rarely turn 2), typically looking for a land. I've found both
ponder and
preordain work rather similar in that context, though I have a slight preference towards
ponder.
Ponder lets me determine what my next three draws will be, and if I miss I get to shuffle, have a shot at a land. If I miss on the redraw, I just have to hope the TOL cooperates, but the odds of this all going wrong is so low that I pretty regularly make this play.
Preordain works similarly, accept I only see 2 cards deep, than have to hope that the third card is a hit.
Ponder is much better in this instance.
Their are a few differences though, from cube:
1. With delver, when running
ponder and
preordain together, you almost always want to
ponder first, because you don't want to upset the scry from
prordain if you can avoid it. This type of interaction in general, is sweet, and another reason why scry lands in cube are great.
2. Running 8 of the most powerful cantrips ever printed, means that even if I miss in my initial land searching, there is a good chance I either have a second cantrip in hand, or will hit on draw. However, some matchups are so condensed, that this can be a game losing stumble.
So I don't know, in terms of t1 play, looking to find a land or other fix another defect, I still prefer
ponder.
I wasn't playing back in 2011, so the exact rational behind
preordain rather than
ponder in those decks I can't really comment on. It does seem strange, because caw blade has so many shuffle effects already in it (fetch lands and squadron hawk) the scry from
preordain is going to be being constantly reset, and the outside shuffle mechanics seem to work much better with
ponder.
I made some mild effort looking for a source explaining their choice, as its hard to be persuaded just by looking at deck lists without more context. The selection of
preordain could be nothing more than negative information cascade for all I know.
I'm guessing, however, that the reason is rooted in the mana bases: those caw blade decks are running 26-28(!) lands, including 8 potential CIPT lands. If you are trying to constantly manage mana flood on your upcoming draws (especially as the deck thins once you cast caw blade), than
preordain seems like a logical choice over
ponder.
Preordain seems to be run here for its ability to better control draws in a land heavy deck, which is different from my delver decks need to dig on turn 1 for land due to its land light design.
Again, I'm not sure one is being objectively better than the other, and not more a function of the deck that its in.
And so the battle of
ponder vs.
preordain continues.
? It seems like a card that probably turns on most games, and there's not a lot of enchantment removal flying around in my format.
