I think this card is worth revisiting - from what I've seen in constructed and limited for GRN, this card is bonkers. I think it's in a weird spot with cube, since spending 4 mana to not affect the board is bad (you're not afforded the same amount of time as regular limited). But you also don't have the same density of cheap burn effects, where Experimental Frenzy is at its best (like in constructed).
That said, I think the card is better than Outpost Siege (and hence better than Vance's Blasting Cannons). Outpost Siege nets you 2 cards per turn - one from your draw step and 1 from the enchantment. Frenzy removes your draw step, so how could it be better than either? Here's I think why:
1. It enables a steady stream of cards -- For you to stop playing cards off the top of your deck, one of two things will happen: either you've run out of mana, or you've run into your second land on top. I wrote a simulation that does the following: assume that we untap on turn n with Experimental Frenzy in play. How many cards can we play off the top of our deck?
I ran a simulation to help me figure this out (for the more technical, a Monte Carlo simulation with 1 million trials). Consider two decks:
A very aggressive aggro deck (16 lands, 8 1 drops, 8 2 drops, 6 3 drops, 2 4 drops)
A typical midrange deck (17 lands, 2 1 drops, 5 2 drops, 6 3 drops, 5 4 drops, 4 5 drops, 2 6 drops)
Produces the following results:
What does this show? It shows that, Experimental Frenzy gets you more than one card on average even if you play it on turn 4, even in a midrange deck. But that's not when you should play Frenzy - you play it when your hand is empty (probably around t6 or t7). At that point, you're getting at least 2 cards off Frenzy. This shows that in terms of raw card advantage, Frenzy is always better in aggro decks than Siege, and usually better in midrange decks.
2. The cards you draw are not lost -- After reading the above, you might say "So what? Frenzy isn't better in terms of card advantage than Siege/Cannons in a midrange deck until turn 7, and it locks me out of access to cards in my hand". But the cards in your hand are not lost. If I don't cast the card revealed off Siege, it's lost forever. I can continue to stockpile cards in my hand with Frenzy, and then pop Frenzy when the cards in my hand are good, regaining access to these cards. There's no real way to quantify this, but there is extra card advantage than what is just shown on the left graph. This is what pushes it above Siege generally imo.
Conclusions Outpost Siege and Experimental Frenzy are fundamentally different cards. I see Outpost Siege as a big midrange/control card - it's grindy, it's reliable, and it's mediocre (which is why most of us don't cube it). Frenzy is (mostly) unplayable in control; reactive cards, especially counterspells, do not pair well with Frenzy. But in decks that are mostly just pushing their own gameplan, like aggro and many proactive flavors of midrange/ramp, with just removal as reactive cards, I think that Frenzy is quite good (as shown above).
TL;DR - Frenzy is better in many decks than Outpost Siege is in those decks, even if Frenzy is bad in control. I personally think this makes Frenzy the better cube card:
Now, is it cubeable? Maybe not - slots are tight for a 4 cmc red card that does not the turn it hits play. It's a high variance card - the floor is abysmal but can be raised with the right deck. Its ceiling is enormous. I think it deserves more attention than it is getting. I'll be testing it, and I hope that it performs well.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Cubes - The Busted Cube. A fully functional, almost 100% custom cube. The project started out by asking "What if other colors got cards on the power level of Mana Drain,Ancestral Recall, and Time Walk?" Draft and enjoy!
That said, I think the card is better than Outpost Siege (and hence better than Vance's Blasting Cannons). Outpost Siege nets you 2 cards per turn - one from your draw step and 1 from the enchantment. Frenzy removes your draw step, so how could it be better than either? Here's I think why:
1. It enables a steady stream of cards -- For you to stop playing cards off the top of your deck, one of two things will happen: either you've run out of mana, or you've run into your second land on top. I wrote a simulation that does the following: assume that we untap on turn n with Experimental Frenzy in play. How many cards can we play off the top of our deck?
I ran a simulation to help me figure this out (for the more technical, a Monte Carlo simulation with 1 million trials). Consider two decks:
A very aggressive aggro deck (16 lands, 8 1 drops, 8 2 drops, 6 3 drops, 2 4 drops)
A typical midrange deck (17 lands, 2 1 drops, 5 2 drops, 6 3 drops, 5 4 drops, 4 5 drops, 2 6 drops)
Produces the following results:
What does this show? It shows that, Experimental Frenzy gets you more than one card on average even if you play it on turn 4, even in a midrange deck. But that's not when you should play Frenzy - you play it when your hand is empty (probably around t6 or t7). At that point, you're getting at least 2 cards off Frenzy. This shows that in terms of raw card advantage, Frenzy is always better in aggro decks than Siege, and usually better in midrange decks.
2. The cards you draw are not lost -- After reading the above, you might say "So what? Frenzy isn't better in terms of card advantage than Siege/Cannons in a midrange deck until turn 7, and it locks me out of access to cards in my hand". But the cards in your hand are not lost. If I don't cast the card revealed off Siege, it's lost forever. I can continue to stockpile cards in my hand with Frenzy, and then pop Frenzy when the cards in my hand are good, regaining access to these cards. There's no real way to quantify this, but there is extra card advantage than what is just shown on the left graph. This is what pushes it above Siege generally imo.
Conclusions
Outpost Siege and Experimental Frenzy are fundamentally different cards. I see Outpost Siege as a big midrange/control card - it's grindy, it's reliable, and it's mediocre (which is why most of us don't cube it). Frenzy is (mostly) unplayable in control; reactive cards, especially counterspells, do not pair well with Frenzy. But in decks that are mostly just pushing their own gameplan, like aggro and many proactive flavors of midrange/ramp, with just removal as reactive cards, I think that Frenzy is quite good (as shown above).
TL;DR - Frenzy is better in many decks than Outpost Siege is in those decks, even if Frenzy is bad in control. I personally think this makes Frenzy the better cube card:
Now, is it cubeable? Maybe not - slots are tight for a 4 cmc red card that does not the turn it hits play. It's a high variance card - the floor is abysmal but can be raised with the right deck. Its ceiling is enormous. I think it deserves more attention than it is getting. I'll be testing it, and I hope that it performs well.
Regular 450 unpowered cube (with some custom cards) - 450 Unpowered