I would imagine his biggest sacrifices are the anti-aggro and anti-graveyard cards in the deck. Probably brings down his percentage in matchups where land destruction doesn't hurt an opponent as much, but probably still leaves him in good shape for storm and other combo decks with fragile mana. What sort of decks does your meta skew towards?
Personally, I played 2 Avalanche Riders back when the quality of cyclers was much worse. The spiders version of the deck with a bunch of 3 power guys was slower and so a card like the Riders was a bit better against control decks of the era, which were also a lot different than the control decks of the day, which were much more prevalent.
I would consider it a mistake to have more than 1 in the 75, unless your meta is 50% Tron and Amulet Titan. But even then, I might prefer Crumble to Dust even over the Riders, which would be behind 3 Blood Moons.
That said, running a ton of LD can win any matchup, maybe he just has had experience dominating what actually are bad matchups because his opponents kept sketchy hands. It would surprise me if he went deep into a large tournament with such a build.
Jammed a dozen games against my friend on Affinity today before the Legacy event, Archfiend is such a beating. Still only on 1, but every game he was in play was absolutely a blowout. He didn’t know what it did until I double cycled to kill his entire board, including his Etched Champion, during his combat phase. #ByeByeNexii
Has anyone changed up the land count recently? I’m on 18/4 SSG, considering a 19th over a utility spell.!
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I also really hesitate about 18 and 19. I don't have as much experience as you but clearly, playing with 18 lands presents risks of being short on mana. I recall a lot of games where I was mana screwed while playing with 18 lands. Less when I was playing with 19. Of course I wouldn't go up to 20 even though that was what the guy who arrived in the oklahoma top 8 did. But seeing how he played against Valakut I don't know if it is a good reference.
I first wanted to use a HyperGeometric calculator and show you the results, but after starting it I realized It would be much more complicated than anticipated.
What I can do though if you're interested, and I'll do it for myself anyway because I'm curious, is creating an Excel Table showing you the chances of :
*Having a starting hand with X lands or more but also Y lands or less ( 2,3 or 4 lands for example)
*Knowing the odds of having three lands and a cascade spell on turn three depending on the number of cyclers and if you consider SSG as a land or not.
*Basically any other thing you may be interested in.
Excel is basically my job so I'm pretty confident in being able to do it and make it easy to use. Tell me if there are some maths you may want to know.
Within the last month, I went to 18/4 SSG. I think this is correct, but it does require you to keep sketchy hands, even burning an SSG to cycle to hit lands.
If you told me I HAD to cut something for a land, it would be a Faerie or Fulminator. And I would add back the Blooming Marsh I took out for the 4th SSG.
Edited to add...
You can't look at it as 18 lands. You need to look at it as 22 mana sources if you are playin SSG. And since you have 4 Street Wraiths, you also need to consider that you are playing a 56 card deck. 22 mana sources out of 56 cards is an average to above average ratio.
Within the last month, I went to 18/4 SSG. I think this is correct, but it does require you to keep sketchy hands, even burning an SSG to cycle to hit lands.
If you told me I HAD to cut something for a land, it would be a Faerie or Fulminator. And I would add back the Blooming Marsh I took out for the 4th SSG.
Edited to add...
You can't look at it as 18 lands. You need to look at it as 22 mana sources if you are playin SSG. And since you have 4 Street Wraiths, you also need to consider that you are playing a 56 card deck. 22 mana sources out of 56 cards is an average to above average ratio.
This is not a good way to think about mana. While it is true that SSG helps with mana, it and a land are quite simply and emphatically not interchangeable. A hand with two SSGs can be mana-screwed; a hand with two lands very rarely will be. Lands>non-land permanent mana>non-land impermanent mana when it comes to screw calculations. It doesn't mean that running 18 lands is necessarily incorrect, it just means that assuming a land is equal to an SSG and therefore pretending you have 22 mana sources is a dangerous and incorrect way to think.
You are going to have to sell me on this difference you are making between permanent and non-permanent mana. I understand that they are different but to say something is incorrect needs to go beyond your opinion.
And I can counter your example. If you have Swamp, Swamp, Overgrown Tomb, Outburst, Fulminator, and Faerie, the permanent nature of your mama does nothing to make the hand keepable.
Bottom line: the Ape is on our deck to be used as mana. I kept a 0-lander at the SCG with 2 SSG, 2 Ceradon and a Wraith, plus cascade spell. I had to use both SSG on turn 1 to hit a land. While maybe you looked at that hand and saw 0 permanent sources of mana, I saw a 10 card hand.
All that may be true Ken. Color screw, however, is not the same as being screwed on volume of mana, a statement I don't think you need me to explain. After all, SSG is also single color--you could have easily had two horrors in that hand instead of two Ceradons. The point is that saying "I have 22 sources of mana" implies that you have 22 sources of mana of equal impact. You had to take a gamble on that 0-lander hand because the SSGs were not permanent--the hand as you described it is risky. If one of the SSGs were a blackcleave cliffs, then suddenly it's one of the best hands we could have. I think that's a good illustration of why SSG is not the same as a land. The hand is still a keep, because the odds are in your favor, but that doesn't mean you don't get burned some of the time by the fact that SSG is not a red land.
Again, this doesn't mean your line or your build is incorrect. It just means that the equivalence of SSG and a land is not correct. In metas where you need to have access to a lot of mana in several matchups, SSG will not get you there. Those metas have existed before and could exist again, even if they don't exist right now.
Typically speaking, impermanent mana sources are counted as .25 of a land when considering mana sources (that’s how we calculate it in hypgeodis formulas anyway).
My question is, do 20 sources get ya consistently to t3 wrath, and does 21 get us there more reliably? There’s no way to really know for sure how the SSG impact our curve, because a hand of 4 SSG no land is infinitely worse than a hand with a mix of SSG and land — although I could probably be convinced to keep it, because SSG leads to some busted turns with our deck.
Re: the Pro Tour meta, those guys spend months preparing for the meta they expect to find there. The fact that Humans and Burn were so overrepresented just goes to show that many pros expected Tron and Scapeshift to be more prominent, while the lack of linear combo decks speaks to the typical nature of Pro Tours — they’d rather gain a few percentage points from their playskill and decision trees than from a busted combo that they’ll only reliably get ~20% of the time. Lucky isn’t what most pros gun for.
On that note, only one guy registered Living End at the Pro Tour, and I want to say it was the same guy who rode it to 2nd place in the European GP because he was a dedicated pilot. Any insight on that?
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Insight on why there was only one? Simple: the deck is actually super hard to pilot properly, and the Pro demographic isn't as friendly to the kind of decks that it beats up on. You just aren't going to see very many midrangey creature decks unless it's really clear that they're the best. And frankly, I think there's a bit of contempt for the deck. People have declared it dead too many times to pick it up now.
Also, since we're here debating mana, I'm gonna post my list. This is tuned for the meta during the summer, so keep that in mind:
I’ve never been a fan of mountain in the list, but I’m also on the 6 fetches + blood moon from the SB plan.
Why the landcyclers exactly? I haven’t seen them in the deck in ages, I thought the consensus was they’re too slow for the fast decks (genuine curious, I’ve not played with them since Amonkhet)
And is the ravine working out well for you?
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Raymond Detiveaux was not on Day 2 of the Pro Tour, neither was he actually in this Pro Tour at all. Cristian Ortiz Ros who came 2 in Gp Copenhagen was also not there, so it's someone else.
It's a rather straightforward simulator so the numbers are not the whole truth. As said in it, it does not consider the color requirements nor the lands you need to cycle for obtaining the t3 cascade. Do not expect a perfect truth from this.
I’ve never been a fan of mountain in the list, but I’m also on the 6 fetches + blood moon from the SB plan.
Why the landcyclers exactly? I haven’t seen them in the deck in ages, I thought the consensus was they’re too slow for the fast decks (genuine curious, I’ve not played with them since Amonkhet)
And is the ravine working out well for you?
I like the landcyclers because of the consistency they provide. We very rarely lose games off of a lack of post-end power, we lose them off of not having the resources (including mana) to actually pull off the living end. Having the ability to occasionally just guarantee a land is very good for the list, as is having a creature with reach. As to the mountain, the landcyclers kinda pressure you to have more targets for your fetches. I'll admit I haven't played too much recent high level modern, so it could be wrong by now.
I love Raging Ravine. It does tons of work by not needing any cascades to resolve to be pressure. It gives you some game against cryptic command, while being more efficient often than Kessig Wolf Run (the lack of trample can be problematic sometimes, but not too often for it to be very noticeable for me). It gives the deck added resiliency and power, and shuts off a lot of the possible comebacks for midrange decks.
Comparing Ravine to Wolf Run is interesting. A guaranteed tap land is pretty brutal, but it makes 2 relevant colors vs colorless. I also think that a Wolf Run is a lot more damage for you money, with Ravine essentially costing 5 mana to get you a 4/4 attacker. I've trampled for 5 or 6 with just 4 mana on the Wolf Run thanks to Desert Ceradon just being massive.
Not sure how it is more resilient to Cryptic either. While it does force your opponent to team tap while you can activate, they can also just put it back in your hand a well as tap your team.
I've won enough games with Kessig that I'm never gonna e unbiased about this though. And hey, one of the best moments in Magic toodeck history was Reid Duke ripping a Kessig Wolf Run to beat Brad Nelson during a GP win for Reid, so it's good enough for me.
I don't think you can look at SSG as .25 of a land for this calculation because of how the deck works. Simply put there is no other deck in the format with as much draw, and most decks care way more about land sticking around than this deck does because the more it cycles the more virtual card advantage it winds up getting. The deck also functions off minimal mana sources, many games are won simply by having 1, 2, 3 mana on turns 1, 2 and 3.
Other things to consider in any land calculation for LE:
Fetches thinning mana sources is relevant. A fetch on turn one makes your 18/4 mana base more like 17/4 or less the whole game. In most decks the effect you get from fetches thinning is marginal at best because it does not see that many cards. This deck sees so many that you can actually over thin if the game goes long enough.
Land destruction is way more pronounced against you since your deck is so thin on lands. A turn 2 fulminator in the mirror can be backbreaking.
SSG has other effects that lands simply do not, such as being a surprise counter for a cursecatcher and the sudden ramp it can give you.
I still run 18/4 most of the time. The concessions I have made is to not load up on horrors since it cannot cycle for red (it is the only card that does not cycle for red in my list) and my lands are actually heavier on black and green than anything. You really don't need red mana under a bloodmoon anyway.
I have said this at my local shop and I will say it here. I believe that SSG may be the most powerful card in the format and would not be surprised to see if get banned in the future. I would easily run 5-6 of them if that was a possibility. It is not the thing that makes the deck, but it is the thing that makes it as competitive as it is.
I don't think you can look at SSG as .25 of a land for this calculation because of how the deck works. Simply put there is no other deck in the format with as much draw, and most decks care way more about land sticking around than this deck does because the more it cycles the more virtual card advantage it winds up getting. The deck also functions off minimal mana sources, many games are won simply by having 1, 2, 3 mana on turns 1, 2 and 3.
Other things to consider in any land calculation for LE:
Fetches thinning mana sources is relevant. A fetch on turn one makes your 18/4 mana base more like 17/4 or less the whole game. In most decks the effect you get from fetches thinning is marginal at best because it does not see that many cards. This deck sees so many that you can actually over thin if the game goes long enough.
Land destruction is way more pronounced against you since your deck is so thin on lands. A turn 2 fulminator in the mirror can be backbreaking.
SSG has other effects that lands simply do not, such as being a surprise counter for a cursecatcher and the sudden ramp it can give you.
I still run 18/4 most of the time. The concessions I have made is to not load up on horrors since it cannot cycle for red (it is the only card that does not cycle for red in my list) and my lands are actually heavier on black and green than anything. You really don't need red mana under a bloodmoon anyway.
I have said this at my local shop and I will say it here. I believe that SSG may be the most powerful card in the format and would not be surprised to see if get banned in the future. I would easily run 5-6 of them if that was a possibility. It is not the thing that makes the deck, but it is the thing that makes it as competitive as it is.
I think not playing Horror is a mistake, but to each their own. As for fetching, yes it does thin our deck, but it’s incredibly marginal ESPECIALLY in our deck. We see more cards in the same amount of turns, so we’re more likely to dig the extra card further to find a land.
As for SSG being .25 of a land, that’s because a land will produce mana every turn. Turn 1 swamp makes on average 4 mana over the course of our game — SSG makes 1 mana, ever.
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I think not playing Horror is a mistake, but to each their own. As for fetching, yes it does thin our deck, but it’s incredibly marginal ESPECIALLY in our deck. We see more cards in the same amount of turns, so we’re more likely to dig the extra card further to find a land.
As for SSG being .25 of a land, that’s because a land will produce mana every turn. Turn 1 swamp makes on average 4 mana over the course of our game — SSG makes 1 mana, ever.
And this is where I think you are incorrect. On the topic of horror, I still run it, just not 4 copies. There are only so many 1 mana cyclers after all. I still run Deadshot and it does me great work.
The reason you cannot consider it .25 is because all your land, and especially SSG, allow you to see many more cards in the course of one game, and the power of SSG is that it lets you get to more lands faster. So it by itself only produces one mana ever, but it gets you to other lands faster to replace itself where in other decks this is not the case. This is the same reason cantrip based decks like storm or many vintage decks run such low land counts, because every mana can contribute to seeing more mana faster. Also consider only the first land provides 4 mana in the course of a 4 turn game. The second land only provides 3, 3rd 2 and so on. If you discount the SSG as .25 then I think you have to discount the average of any given regular land based on the average turns you see with the deck. In that way every SSG will be .25 but the average of all the other lands will be much lower than 1. Often the 5/6th lands will be worth 0 mana where as SSG can also still be a creature.
There is a big difference between your odds on the hypergeometric for what your opening hand will look like, and what your subsequent draws will look like. While our deck is comparable when figuring out mulligans to any other deck, the way it plays allows us to keep hands other decks would have to toss back. Dredge does not calculate mana the same way as other decks, and I do not think we should either.
Also consider how we use so many of our cards in any given game. We can afford the card disadvantages from SSG because almost every other card in the list is providing VCA. It is also my experience the we end games with fewer cards in our hands than most decks because we can use them so efficiently. Fair decks like Jund often end games with 2-3 cards they never used, where as we not only have fewer cards but saw so many more of them. Street wraith is not just thinning and life reduction in our list like it is in deaths shadow, but also a wincon from the yard.
I have been playing the deck since the start of the format and have tried higher land counts, typically to shore up the long game. But when you prep for the long game at the cost of the early game what you tend to do is actually get to the longer game more often, which is not where this deck shines at all. Youll be able to cascade slightly more often on 3, but wont have a critical mass or creatures as often either. I would rather try to go off earlier and sacrifice the long game a bit, simply because I have better chances of winning it there to begin with.
I would consider it a mistake to have more than 1 in the 75, unless your meta is 50% Tron and Amulet Titan. But even then, I might prefer Crumble to Dust even over the Riders, which would be behind 3 Blood Moons.
That said, running a ton of LD can win any matchup, maybe he just has had experience dominating what actually are bad matchups because his opponents kept sketchy hands. It would surprise me if he went deep into a large tournament with such a build.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Has anyone changed up the land count recently? I’m on 18/4 SSG, considering a 19th over a utility spell.!
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I first wanted to use a HyperGeometric calculator and show you the results, but after starting it I realized It would be much more complicated than anticipated.
What I can do though if you're interested, and I'll do it for myself anyway because I'm curious, is creating an Excel Table showing you the chances of :
*Having a starting hand with X lands or more but also Y lands or less ( 2,3 or 4 lands for example)
*Knowing the odds of having three lands and a cascade spell on turn three depending on the number of cyclers and if you consider SSG as a land or not.
*Basically any other thing you may be interested in.
Excel is basically my job so I'm pretty confident in being able to do it and make it easy to use. Tell me if there are some maths you may want to know.
If you told me I HAD to cut something for a land, it would be a Faerie or Fulminator. And I would add back the Blooming Marsh I took out for the 4th SSG.
Edited to add...
You can't look at it as 18 lands. You need to look at it as 22 mana sources if you are playin SSG. And since you have 4 Street Wraiths, you also need to consider that you are playing a 56 card deck. 22 mana sources out of 56 cards is an average to above average ratio.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
First couple of games really stressful tho lol.
EDH: Xenagos, God of Revels.
And gotta love that the top 8 has Junk midrange, R/B Hollow One, U/R Pyromancer, and Mardu Pyromancer in it.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
This is not a good way to think about mana. While it is true that SSG helps with mana, it and a land are quite simply and emphatically not interchangeable. A hand with two SSGs can be mana-screwed; a hand with two lands very rarely will be. Lands>non-land permanent mana>non-land impermanent mana when it comes to screw calculations. It doesn't mean that running 18 lands is necessarily incorrect, it just means that assuming a land is equal to an SSG and therefore pretending you have 22 mana sources is a dangerous and incorrect way to think.
And I can counter your example. If you have Swamp, Swamp, Overgrown Tomb, Outburst, Fulminator, and Faerie, the permanent nature of your mama does nothing to make the hand keepable.
Bottom line: the Ape is on our deck to be used as mana. I kept a 0-lander at the SCG with 2 SSG, 2 Ceradon and a Wraith, plus cascade spell. I had to use both SSG on turn 1 to hit a land. While maybe you looked at that hand and saw 0 permanent sources of mana, I saw a 10 card hand.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Again, this doesn't mean your line or your build is incorrect. It just means that the equivalence of SSG and a land is not correct. In metas where you need to have access to a lot of mana in several matchups, SSG will not get you there. Those metas have existed before and could exist again, even if they don't exist right now.
My question is, do 20 sources get ya consistently to t3 wrath, and does 21 get us there more reliably? There’s no way to really know for sure how the SSG impact our curve, because a hand of 4 SSG no land is infinitely worse than a hand with a mix of SSG and land — although I could probably be convinced to keep it, because SSG leads to some busted turns with our deck.
Re: the Pro Tour meta, those guys spend months preparing for the meta they expect to find there. The fact that Humans and Burn were so overrepresented just goes to show that many pros expected Tron and Scapeshift to be more prominent, while the lack of linear combo decks speaks to the typical nature of Pro Tours — they’d rather gain a few percentage points from their playskill and decision trees than from a busted combo that they’ll only reliably get ~20% of the time. Lucky isn’t what most pros gun for.
On that note, only one guy registered Living End at the Pro Tour, and I want to say it was the same guy who rode it to 2nd place in the European GP because he was a dedicated pilot. Any insight on that?
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Also, since we're here debating mana, I'm gonna post my list. This is tuned for the meta during the summer, so keep that in mind:
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Stomping Ground
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Copperline Gorge
2 Blooming Marsh
1 Raging Ravine
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Faerie Macabre
4 Street Wraith
4 Monstrous Carabid
3 Desert Ceradon
2 Pale Recluse
2 Archfiend of Ifnir
3 Beast Within
4 Fulminator Mage
1 Kolaghan's Command
3 Demonic Dread
4 Violent Outburst
3 Living End
Why the landcyclers exactly? I haven’t seen them in the deck in ages, I thought the consensus was they’re too slow for the fast decks (genuine curious, I’ve not played with them since Amonkhet)
And is the ravine working out well for you?
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BTW, here it is, the probability calculator : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aRahs8Tz8pAoY8MBFz716tLxedQfQKUr2kYpjRr3JjE/edit?usp=sharing
It's a rather straightforward simulator so the numbers are not the whole truth. As said in it, it does not consider the color requirements nor the lands you need to cycle for obtaining the t3 cascade. Do not expect a perfect truth from this.
I like the landcyclers because of the consistency they provide. We very rarely lose games off of a lack of post-end power, we lose them off of not having the resources (including mana) to actually pull off the living end. Having the ability to occasionally just guarantee a land is very good for the list, as is having a creature with reach. As to the mountain, the landcyclers kinda pressure you to have more targets for your fetches. I'll admit I haven't played too much recent high level modern, so it could be wrong by now.
I love Raging Ravine. It does tons of work by not needing any cascades to resolve to be pressure. It gives you some game against cryptic command, while being more efficient often than Kessig Wolf Run (the lack of trample can be problematic sometimes, but not too often for it to be very noticeable for me). It gives the deck added resiliency and power, and shuts off a lot of the possible comebacks for midrange decks.
Not sure how it is more resilient to Cryptic either. While it does force your opponent to team tap while you can activate, they can also just put it back in your hand a well as tap your team.
I've won enough games with Kessig that I'm never gonna e unbiased about this though. And hey, one of the best moments in Magic toodeck history was Reid Duke ripping a Kessig Wolf Run to beat Brad Nelson during a GP win for Reid, so it's good enough for me.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Other things to consider in any land calculation for LE:
I still run 18/4 most of the time. The concessions I have made is to not load up on horrors since it cannot cycle for red (it is the only card that does not cycle for red in my list) and my lands are actually heavier on black and green than anything. You really don't need red mana under a bloodmoon anyway.
I have said this at my local shop and I will say it here. I believe that SSG may be the most powerful card in the format and would not be surprised to see if get banned in the future. I would easily run 5-6 of them if that was a possibility. It is not the thing that makes the deck, but it is the thing that makes it as competitive as it is.
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I think not playing Horror is a mistake, but to each their own. As for fetching, yes it does thin our deck, but it’s incredibly marginal ESPECIALLY in our deck. We see more cards in the same amount of turns, so we’re more likely to dig the extra card further to find a land.
As for SSG being .25 of a land, that’s because a land will produce mana every turn. Turn 1 swamp makes on average 4 mana over the course of our game — SSG makes 1 mana, ever.
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And this is where I think you are incorrect. On the topic of horror, I still run it, just not 4 copies. There are only so many 1 mana cyclers after all. I still run Deadshot and it does me great work.
The reason you cannot consider it .25 is because all your land, and especially SSG, allow you to see many more cards in the course of one game, and the power of SSG is that it lets you get to more lands faster. So it by itself only produces one mana ever, but it gets you to other lands faster to replace itself where in other decks this is not the case. This is the same reason cantrip based decks like storm or many vintage decks run such low land counts, because every mana can contribute to seeing more mana faster. Also consider only the first land provides 4 mana in the course of a 4 turn game. The second land only provides 3, 3rd 2 and so on. If you discount the SSG as .25 then I think you have to discount the average of any given regular land based on the average turns you see with the deck. In that way every SSG will be .25 but the average of all the other lands will be much lower than 1. Often the 5/6th lands will be worth 0 mana where as SSG can also still be a creature.
There is a big difference between your odds on the hypergeometric for what your opening hand will look like, and what your subsequent draws will look like. While our deck is comparable when figuring out mulligans to any other deck, the way it plays allows us to keep hands other decks would have to toss back. Dredge does not calculate mana the same way as other decks, and I do not think we should either.
Also consider how we use so many of our cards in any given game. We can afford the card disadvantages from SSG because almost every other card in the list is providing VCA. It is also my experience the we end games with fewer cards in our hands than most decks because we can use them so efficiently. Fair decks like Jund often end games with 2-3 cards they never used, where as we not only have fewer cards but saw so many more of them. Street wraith is not just thinning and life reduction in our list like it is in deaths shadow, but also a wincon from the yard.
I have been playing the deck since the start of the format and have tried higher land counts, typically to shore up the long game. But when you prep for the long game at the cost of the early game what you tend to do is actually get to the longer game more often, which is not where this deck shines at all. Youll be able to cascade slightly more often on 3, but wont have a critical mass or creatures as often either. I would rather try to go off earlier and sacrifice the long game a bit, simply because I have better chances of winning it there to begin with.
Http://www.fantasticneighborhood.com/
Comedy gaming podcast. Listening to it makes you cool.