The question for me would be what exactly are they then? There's also this:

2 colored mana chart for 40 card decks, calculating how mane lands you should play to on average acquire two of a single mana color:

Turn 1: -
Turn 2: 14
Turn 3: 13
Turn 4: 12

"For 40-card decks, the requirements that I computed are rather high. Surprisingly high, I might say. They suggest that the classic 9-8 mana base is often not sufficient for a two-color deck with double-color requirements in both colors."

Wilds fudges the math here. On the one hand, it's definitely better than running 5 more plains, say, but it doesn't get you to 2 WW faster unless you happen to have it in your opening hand.

Also found this, which seems like something I should read during lunch: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/gene ... -Hand.html

@cky, I mentioned my English degree precisely because it's not statistics, hence explaining my "fudgy math."

Yeah, I cannot follow that. You need a friggin' degree to follow some of that.

~SE++

This is what I was getting at. I must've read somewhere else or heard in another discussion about the "value" of a guildgate, and I assume it's less than a land, but more than a mana dork, and a wilds is more than a mana dork but less than a guildgate. Makes sense?

Like one in rocket science? (j/k cky)

I think you all are missing a point.

Evolving Wilds takes up a spell slot. This is not a land, this is a Rampant Growth. Or a landcycler, if you are more comfortable with that analogy.

There is a reason Limited decks play 17 lands. They want to get to five mana in seven turns (insert appropriate mana/turns here). Playing EW as your third land screws up that math. Probabilities don't work anymore, since you have one land less left in the deck. It fixes, but it also slows down your land drops.

I think that in a typical draft deck, EW is best as a late-game drop, where it simply cycles and thins your deck. Even then, it's not very good. If you need fixing so bad you need EW, you must accept the fact that you need to play more lands. Just draft good decks, and use a 10-7 or 9-8 lands split. There are so many playables in recent sets, there is no need to splash or play low mana double colored cards of two colors (splashable rare bombs seem to be the only exception).

And thanks rstnme for making me think about this.

Usually I play 18 lands, so that may affect my perception of Evolving Wilds. It definitely gets worse the less lands you run.

Well, when he shows you:



Yeah, that whole part makes the article a little less accessible to the average reader.

~SE++

Assuming you need to draw your 6th land (out of 17) on your 6th draw step.
Wilds: You have seen 13 cards (initial 7 + 5 draws + Fetched land, 6 are land), so there are 27 remaining.
Chance of drawing 6th = 11/27 = 40.47%

No Wilds: You have seen 12 cards (initial 7 + 5 draws, 5 are land), so there are 28 remaining
Chance of drawing 6th = 12/28 = 42.86%

If you extend this to getting >= 1 land draw steps 6/7/8
It's 1 - (16/27*16/26*16/25) = 76.7% (Wilds)
and 1 - (16/28*16/27*16/26) = 79.16% (non-wilds)

That actually seems pretty significant. On the plus side for evolving wilds, when you are drawing 6/7/8 you have a lower chance of drawing 2 or 3 more lands (not going to figure it out).

IDK. being affected 1 in roughly 40 games doesn't seem that relevant to me.

Is 2.4% statistically significant? I don't believe it is. However, you seem much better at doing probability math than I am. Could you calculate the probability of drawing the correct land out of 2 colours (50/50) mix, the compare that to doing so when one of those lands is substituted for Evolving Wilds? I believe you will find the probability boost of doing so will be greater than 2.4%. If so, then it could be said that including a single Evolving Wilds in your 2-colour deck will get you out of more jams than it'll put you into. (again, assuming a most common deck, as not every single deck wants or needs that fixing)

You can just use the tables in Franks' article and not worry about the hypergeometic distribution. I have had that article open in a browser tab all year, but I forgot that it had that math section.

However, he does not give guidance on number of lands needed to hit 5 by turn 7 or whatever... although I think this is also available.

In my copious spare time i was going to extend (actually, rewrtie) Franks's simulator to handle all these cases, maybe wrap a web interface around it so you could paste in a deck and it would optimize the mana base (probably punting on activated costs).

Basic optimization is "maximize the number of spells I can play". Beyond that you have to actually be an AI.

There is a trick to reading scientific articles: You read the introduction and the conclusion. If you really need to understand the things in between, you give it to a postgraduate. Works every time.

2.4% is bigger than I expected. I wrote that calculation expecting to say "see, not important" (<1%). But it was kind of eyebrow raising.

Yarium, the tricky part about your calculation is that it depends by what draw step you need specific lands.

Well, if you're up for it, try it in both situations. Start with having a 2-land hand, with 1 land being Evolving Wilds, when you need 3 mana (with 2 being a specific kind) on turn 3. Then figure out the chances of having 6 mana on turn 9 after this has happened.

Then do the same thing, but without Evolving Wilds.

That should give a pretty good example of the opportunity cost involved in substituting 1 land for Evolving Wilds.

That was a really fascinating article, which I think you took the wrong conclusion from as pointed out earlier in the thread, but thank you for pointing it out.

Hypergeometic probability sounds very fancy, but really it just involved selecting objects and not replacing them before selecting again. That said, the page he shows you is very dense with mathematical shorthand which makes it essentially illegible without careful reading. Suffice to say, the actual math isn't particularly hard, just extremely tedious (which is why computers are the most wonderful thing on earth).

What I find really interesting is how this article really lays out that color screw is pretty inevitable in large sample size for limited. Even with a 9/8 split and no double colored costs in your deck, you have around a 10% chance of not having your secondary color by T3 keeping a reasonable hand. Considering that a 4 round FNM has you play anywhere from 8-12 games, that means the probability of color screw for just that circumstance is anywhere between 57%-72%. True, that is a mild form of color screw, but it is worth remembering that for any box on those charts, you are likely to fail that prediction over half the time in a 4 round tournament.

Edit: I just realized that he straight up Monte Carlo'd it. Which is every physicist's favorite cludge calculation method (It minimizes coding time, and who cares how long the program actually takes to run?).

Edit2: The chance of something with a 90% probability of happening not happening in a game during a 3-round FNM is 47%-61% (depending on # games played).

Quoted for TMF truth. Which is why I like to run Evolving Wilds.



Once you get to mulliganing strategy, fetch lands, alternate casting costs, etc. It's extremely hard (possibly non-deterministic) to calculate analytically.

for the record, that's not the method he actually uses. it's an accurate, rigorous calculation, but since it's easy to screw up he just uses a simulation. and if you wanted, you could look up hypergeometric probability.

Oh, the other thing to point out is that there is an easy function for calculating any of those sums in Excel. What's tedious is stringing together 10 or 20 of them to cover all the cases where you want to know >= 3 lands in 10 or something.

I think you play it if you're 3 colors or 2 colors with an off-color member of the Nightfire Giant cycle. Otherwise, stick to basics.

The best drafter I know won last night night with a 5 color (RG base) with 2 wilds, 2 pain lands, 2 kird cheiftans, a dauntless river marshall, a Nightfire Giant, AND a Sunblade Elf. I think his only blue card was chasm skulker. He also had a meteorite and a verdant haven.