Again, the scenario you pointed out is corner case. I'll just go with playing STE and ship the turn. I admit there is a tempo loss when using the Map vs any other land searchers (as I have also stated before), but again, reducing mulligan hands is what I'm saying an additional benefit to the Map.
This deck plays 7 lands. You've already acknowledged that. Using a Lay of the Land effect to find your third land is absolutely not corner case.
I also admit that, I haven't tested the card (and I might not be able to use it, given that the recent list I use include Madcap Experiment). I'm more on theorycrafting here. But let's just say we should not judge a card immediately as bad or worse. The card warrants testing I believe (and it even started a very different angle of attack for the deck, the mono-R one).
I goldfished a list with Maps and Stirrings. I was running into the exact same situations that you keep calling "corner case" and getting my kill turn slowed down by 1 or more. If I don't even feel confident of my chances against a goldfish, imagine how I would feel against a real opponent.
I'll just say that we should not dismiss inconvenient scenarios as "corner case". Go ahead and test it out. You can goldfish upwards of 60+ hands per hour as long as you're familiar with keyboard shortcuts. That'll give you a good idea of what's "corner case" and what isn't.
It's actually not that worse. Yes it is a delayed land search, but it turns on the opening hand of Simian Spirit Guide and no land or Chancellor of the Tangle, which is most of the time a mulligan. It also helps that it can turn on Delirium (as I have stressed before, it should not be the focus, but at least it helps Traverse the Ulvenwald go into tutor mode). But we're talking of corner cases here. Your case being 0 land, no land drop, and an initial source. Now, if that initial source is G, any other land search is better though the map is playable. But if it is the Ape, then Renegade Map is better, and any other land searcher is not playable, thus resulting to a mulligan. I like that rather than take mulligan on a 7-land deck.
I said 0 land in hand. That doesn't necessarily mean 0 land in play. You lose percentage points in situations like 2 lands in play, no lands in hand, STE + Map in hand, haven't played a land this turn yet - if Map was a Lay of the Land instead, you'd thin the deck of 1 land and have 1 more mana to work with on subsequent turns.
SSG + Map just means "replace those two cards with Forest and skip your first turn". The last four words in that sentence don't inspire confidence, given that this deck already has a hard time killing on turn 4. You want to keep a hand where your first land drop is on turn 2, go ahead. I'll take the mulligan.
It's worse than any G land searcher like Lay of the Land. If you have 0 lands in hand and haven't made a land drop, you'd much rather have Lay of the Land than Renegade Map.
Map is not good. It sucks if you're relying on a Lay of the Land effect in order to make your land drop for the turn, but said effect is Map (can't crack it immediately).
Yes the mana Creatures I'm using are weak, but isn't that a positive, not a negative? Players who don't know the deck's plan won't exactly be inclined to use removal on 1/1 Elves. It's sort of like when one plays against Dredgevine--does one really want to use removal on Hedron Crab? It's the deck's enabler, but surely there's a better target? I believe the same of Arbor Elf and Llanowar Elves.
Never, ever expect your opponent to screw up. Always expect him to play the best move. A competent player would know that if a deck plays mana dorks, there's no better target for removal than those dorks, with rare exceptions. It's likely a ramp deck of some sort, and if he kills the dorks you have a harder time getting to however much mana your wincon needs. And mana dorks are likely the only thing he can spend removal on: everything else is going to be immune either because it's not a creature, or because its toughness to too high to be Bolted.
I immediately disregarded Wall of Roots as viable because it does nothing to get Land out, while Gatecreeper Vine does not suffer from this. This could be an incredibly naïve decision. Please explain why Wall of Roots is more useful. Also do you mind explaining how and why it is the best?
gwax's answer is correct. I'll add on one more thing: you don't have to play all ramp spells/land tutors. You can get away with mana dorks. An all-ramp version of this deck usually fires off Belcher on turn 5, but playing mana dorks lets you shave that down to turn 4, even though you might have some extra lands left in the deck. If you play Stomping Ground, sometimes you just blind-Belch on turn 4 and kill them. Sometimes you might fail to kill on turn 4 - that's OK, just Belch again on turn 5, which should seal the deal. All in all you end up killing just as fast as, or faster than, the all-ramp version.
The de facto way to deal with this sort of situation is to devote your entire sideboard to the bad matchups. So, for example, you could have 4 Creeping Corrosion against Affinity and 4 Nature's Claim against Twin (currently Tempo Twin is more popular, and that deck plays 0-1 Kiki-Jikis so you just have to worry about the enchantment). This leaves you with fewer SB cards against BGx, but I don't think you'll need any SB cards for those matchups since the maindeck is already so good.
The math doesn't really work out for Search for Tomorrow. It's a super awesome card on turn one, mediocre on turn two, and garbage from there on out.
Search for Tomorrow is net identical to Rampant Growth.
Growth: 1G, search for a tapped land
Search: 2G, search for an untapped land
Now Search is worse if you don't have a 1-mana spell to chain off the untapped land, but on the other hand it has an alternative mode (Suspend).
Don't play Panglacial Wurm. You only have 7 lands in the deck. It costs 7 mana, plus at least 1 if you're going to use the cast-while-searching ability. There'll be practically 0 opportunities for you to use it.
In an attempt to hit lands more consistently while leaving Belcher's blind-activation kill rate unchanged, I tried playing 6 Forest + 2 Stomping Ground. I couldn't feel the difference though.
Most builds do play SSG, in fact.
With regards to Wild Cantor, it's just bad on its own. Most of the time it's worse than a mana dork. Wild Cantor gives you mana only once, and that's it. Mana dorks give you mana once per turn, for as long as they stay alive.
Panda: I didn't keep track to the numbers, but I'd estimate that I use the beatdown plan about 40% of the time. You have 8 beaters (Chancellor is kinda hard to cast though, because the Stomping Ground is usually stuck in your library, so you need a mana dork/Sprawl/SSG to get to 7) and 4 Belchers. If you draw a beater and Belcher, you'd go for the Belcher kill more often.
If you have something like 3-4 lands and Belcher+Wurmcoil in hand, you'd want to cast Wurmcoil first, because it's unlikely that one Belcher activation will be lethal. Wurmcoil buys you some time.
Lectrys: If you compare threat counts:
UG version has: 4 Belcher, 4 Fabricate, 4 Chancellor, 4 Recross
my version has: 4 Belcher, 4 Wurmcoil, 4 Chancellor, 4 Stirrings.
I have just as many threats as the Fabricate version. The difference is that Fabricate is basically a 10-mana (3+4+3) threat compared to Wurmcoil's 6, and Recross vs Stirrings.
My beef with Fabricate/Recross is...well, based on my past experiences with combo decks, 3 mana tutors never make the cut. You'd never see Muddle the Mixture in Storm despite the fact that it can tutor your wincon and counter your opponent's counters, or Drift of Phantasms in Eggs (post-FR it became unnecessary, but even pre-FR it wasn't good enough to make the deck competitive).
In fact, Recross isn't even a tutor per se. Sometimes you have no way of getting out that last Stomping Ground from your library, so it merely acts as a ramp spell that lets you scry 1. If you win the clash, you get Recross back, but you need two more turns before you can see a wincon (one turn to cast Recross again, one turn to draw the wincon off your stacked deck). Even in the best-case scenario, Recross merely puts the card on top of your library, not in your hand.
I think the issue here is that engine combo decks need to be able to win fast, so low-cost diggers that don't always work will beat 3CMC tutors. Most of the time, you either cast the tutor and lose because you can't kill your opponent on time, or you keep the tutor in hand all game and never cast it because your other spells are sufficient for you to win. Either way, you should start thinking of a replacement, because the tutor isn't doing anything for you.
Lastly, don't forget that 64% is only for cases where you do not draw a threat naturally.
I've been goldfishing this all day. Yes, I really feel that it is consistent. It's pretty easy to hit either Belcher by itself, or a combination of Chancellor + Wurmcoil.
Some tips for Stirrings:
1) You only want to cast this card when you're on at least 2 lands. If you're on 1 land, practically any other 1-drop is better. If you have no other 1-drops, you should have mulliganed the hand.
2) If you're looking for a wincon with Stirrings, you want to thin your deck of as many lands as possible before casting Stirrings. If you're desperate for that wincon, hitting a land with Stirrings is as good as useless. So try to minimize the number of cards in your deck before doing it.
3) On the other hand, if you'd prefer to have a land in hand over a Wurmcoil/Belcher (because maybe you already have 1 wincon in hand, so an extra is useless), cast Stirrings first.
4) Remember that Stirrings throws the unused cards to the bottom. Sequence correctly. If there's only 1 land in your library, you'd want to cast land tutors first, then cast Stirrings. Not only will the land tutor thin your deck ever so slightly, if you whiff with Stirrings, at least you're 5 cards closer to a wincon.
5) If you have a Belcher out, do not cast Stirrings. What will most likely happen is that you don't find a land in the top 5 cards, and thus reduce your Belcher damage output by 5-10.
6) Above all, just ask yourself these two questions every time you hesitate on Stirrings:
"What do I really want to see with Stirrings?"
"If I don't see that, am I completely screwed?"
These questions will help you decide if you should cast Stirrings or some other spell in your hand.
Where are you getting this number of 27%? Firstly, Stirrings should never ever be the first thing you play. If it is, you should have mulliganed. Secondly, even if it was, let's calculate the probabilities of hitting something:
First, the best-case scenario. a.k.a. the one that you should have mulled.
Assume it's turn 1, 1 land in hand, no other colorless cards drawn. That leaves 14 colorless cards left in the deck, out of 53.
Total 5-card combinations off Stirrings = nCr(53, 5) <- call this p
Total 5-card combinations off Strrings that don't include a colorless card = nCr(53-14, 5) <- call this q
Probability of NOT whiffing = 1 - (q/p) = 0.799
That figure of 27% couldn't be further from the truth. You actually have ~79% chance of hitting something with Stirrings on the first turn.
Next, the worst-case scenario.
Assume it's turn 4 and there are no lands left in the library. Also assume that we haven't drawn any Belchers/Wurmcoils (otherwise, we wouldn't need to use Stirrings), and that there are 45 cards left in the library (7 from starting hand, 5-6 from search spells, 4-3 from draws).
Total 5-card combinations off Stirrings = nCr(45, 5) <- call this p
Total 5-card combinations off Strrings that don't include a colorless card = nCr(45-8, 5) <- call this q
Probability of NOT whiffing = 1 - (q/p) = 0.643
I'll emphasize the second number: when you're digging for a threat with Stirrings, you have a 64% chance of getting it.
I goldfished a list with Maps and Stirrings. I was running into the exact same situations that you keep calling "corner case" and getting my kill turn slowed down by 1 or more. If I don't even feel confident of my chances against a goldfish, imagine how I would feel against a real opponent.
I'll just say that we should not dismiss inconvenient scenarios as "corner case". Go ahead and test it out. You can goldfish upwards of 60+ hands per hour as long as you're familiar with keyboard shortcuts. That'll give you a good idea of what's "corner case" and what isn't.
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Big Johnny.
SSG + Map just means "replace those two cards with Forest and skip your first turn". The last four words in that sentence don't inspire confidence, given that this deck already has a hard time killing on turn 4. You want to keep a hand where your first land drop is on turn 2, go ahead. I'll take the mulligan.
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Big Johnny.
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Big Johnny.
Abundant Growth is better than Unbridled Growth.
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Big Johnny.
Never, ever expect your opponent to screw up. Always expect him to play the best move. A competent player would know that if a deck plays mana dorks, there's no better target for removal than those dorks, with rare exceptions. It's likely a ramp deck of some sort, and if he kills the dorks you have a harder time getting to however much mana your wincon needs. And mana dorks are likely the only thing he can spend removal on: everything else is going to be immune either because it's not a creature, or because its toughness to too high to be Bolted.
gwax's answer is correct. I'll add on one more thing: you don't have to play all ramp spells/land tutors. You can get away with mana dorks. An all-ramp version of this deck usually fires off Belcher on turn 5, but playing mana dorks lets you shave that down to turn 4, even though you might have some extra lands left in the deck. If you play Stomping Ground, sometimes you just blind-Belch on turn 4 and kill them. Sometimes you might fail to kill on turn 4 - that's OK, just Belch again on turn 5, which should seal the deal. All in all you end up killing just as fast as, or faster than, the all-ramp version.
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Big Johnny.
edit: you get a token for each exiled card, not each time you exile. So you'll end up with ~40 tokens.
Also, you can beat Leyline by hardcasting Chancellor.
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Big Johnny.
2 Stomping Ground
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Safewright Quest
4 Caravan Vigil
4 Lay of the Land
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Arbor Elf
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Rampant Growth
4 Wall of Roots
4 Batterskull
4 Goblin Charbelcher
3 Nature's Claim
2 Dismember
3 Fog
3 Defense Grid
2 Torpor Orb
2 Spellskite
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Big Johnny.
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Big Johnny.
Search for Tomorrow is net identical to Rampant Growth.
Growth: 1G, search for a tapped land
Search: 2G, search for an untapped land
Now Search is worse if you don't have a 1-mana spell to chain off the untapped land, but on the other hand it has an alternative mode (Suspend).
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Big Johnny.
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Big Johnny.
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Big Johnny.
With regards to Wild Cantor, it's just bad on its own. Most of the time it's worse than a mana dork. Wild Cantor gives you mana only once, and that's it. Mana dorks give you mana once per turn, for as long as they stay alive.
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Big Johnny.
If you have something like 3-4 lands and Belcher+Wurmcoil in hand, you'd want to cast Wurmcoil first, because it's unlikely that one Belcher activation will be lethal. Wurmcoil buys you some time.
Lectrys: If you compare threat counts:
UG version has: 4 Belcher, 4 Fabricate, 4 Chancellor, 4 Recross
my version has: 4 Belcher, 4 Wurmcoil, 4 Chancellor, 4 Stirrings.
I have just as many threats as the Fabricate version. The difference is that Fabricate is basically a 10-mana (3+4+3) threat compared to Wurmcoil's 6, and Recross vs Stirrings.
My beef with Fabricate/Recross is...well, based on my past experiences with combo decks, 3 mana tutors never make the cut. You'd never see Muddle the Mixture in Storm despite the fact that it can tutor your wincon and counter your opponent's counters, or Drift of Phantasms in Eggs (post-FR it became unnecessary, but even pre-FR it wasn't good enough to make the deck competitive).
In fact, Recross isn't even a tutor per se. Sometimes you have no way of getting out that last Stomping Ground from your library, so it merely acts as a ramp spell that lets you scry 1. If you win the clash, you get Recross back, but you need two more turns before you can see a wincon (one turn to cast Recross again, one turn to draw the wincon off your stacked deck). Even in the best-case scenario, Recross merely puts the card on top of your library, not in your hand.
I think the issue here is that engine combo decks need to be able to win fast, so low-cost diggers that don't always work will beat 3CMC tutors. Most of the time, you either cast the tutor and lose because you can't kill your opponent on time, or you keep the tutor in hand all game and never cast it because your other spells are sufficient for you to win. Either way, you should start thinking of a replacement, because the tutor isn't doing anything for you.
Lastly, don't forget that 64% is only for cases where you do not draw a threat naturally.
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Big Johnny.
Some tips for Stirrings:
1) You only want to cast this card when you're on at least 2 lands. If you're on 1 land, practically any other 1-drop is better. If you have no other 1-drops, you should have mulliganed the hand.
2) If you're looking for a wincon with Stirrings, you want to thin your deck of as many lands as possible before casting Stirrings. If you're desperate for that wincon, hitting a land with Stirrings is as good as useless. So try to minimize the number of cards in your deck before doing it.
3) On the other hand, if you'd prefer to have a land in hand over a Wurmcoil/Belcher (because maybe you already have 1 wincon in hand, so an extra is useless), cast Stirrings first.
4) Remember that Stirrings throws the unused cards to the bottom. Sequence correctly. If there's only 1 land in your library, you'd want to cast land tutors first, then cast Stirrings. Not only will the land tutor thin your deck ever so slightly, if you whiff with Stirrings, at least you're 5 cards closer to a wincon.
5) If you have a Belcher out, do not cast Stirrings. What will most likely happen is that you don't find a land in the top 5 cards, and thus reduce your Belcher damage output by 5-10.
6) Above all, just ask yourself these two questions every time you hesitate on Stirrings:
"What do I really want to see with Stirrings?"
"If I don't see that, am I completely screwed?"
These questions will help you decide if you should cast Stirrings or some other spell in your hand.
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Big Johnny.
First, the best-case scenario. a.k.a. the one that you should have mulled.
Assume it's turn 1, 1 land in hand, no other colorless cards drawn. That leaves 14 colorless cards left in the deck, out of 53.
Total 5-card combinations off Stirrings = nCr(53, 5) <- call this p
Total 5-card combinations off Strrings that don't include a colorless card = nCr(53-14, 5) <- call this q
Probability of NOT whiffing = 1 - (q/p) = 0.799
That figure of 27% couldn't be further from the truth. You actually have ~79% chance of hitting something with Stirrings on the first turn.
Next, the worst-case scenario.
Assume it's turn 4 and there are no lands left in the library. Also assume that we haven't drawn any Belchers/Wurmcoils (otherwise, we wouldn't need to use Stirrings), and that there are 45 cards left in the library (7 from starting hand, 5-6 from search spells, 4-3 from draws).
Total 5-card combinations off Stirrings = nCr(45, 5) <- call this p
Total 5-card combinations off Strrings that don't include a colorless card = nCr(45-8, 5) <- call this q
Probability of NOT whiffing = 1 - (q/p) = 0.643
I'll emphasize the second number: when you're digging for a threat with Stirrings, you have a 64% chance of getting it.
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Big Johnny.