Sig? Adding those would help us draw our best cards more often. Ive tried cutting a land from 18-17, cutting down to 3 Werebears, and then a few removal spells. With 4x Bolt and maybe 2 Wraths, we don't need so many Vapor Snags which are card disadvantage in a mid to long game.
Thanks, that makes sense. How does the deck run off 17 lands though, and would cutting land make you lean more towards Manamorphose than Probe for fixing?
So, Im thinking that more cantrips lets us get closer to our best cards. The problem with 3 color pauper decks is the lands are slow. Manamorphose helps with some color fixing early on while we fetch for the right colored lands. 17 is probably not enough, but maybe with probes and all the cantrips we can play with such a low number and have it work. I have been looking into Rugged Highlands as a single way to get all our nonblue colors in one land, thus letting us fetch for islands. Thoughts on that?
As you say, our color smoothing options are slow, whether they're gainlands or fetches. I think I came to similar conclusions as you did in this post. In that deck, I needed White most quickly, and green after that.
My splash color (red) eventually came mostly from gainlands. It's ok that they come into play tapped because I don't tend to need them early, and it's better that they're duals because those mana sources can, and often are, used to cast other colored spells.
On the other hand the color I needed first (white) had the most basics because they could come down early and be used immediately, and it was ok that they couldn't be tapped for other colors because I often needed to use them for on-color spells.
One additional wrinkle here is that fetches are great to reset the topdeck after a Ponder or Brainstorm, but I still really appreciate the flexibility of gainlands especially in a deck with a low land count. Having two Islands, a Forest, and a Mountain can be more limiting than two Thornwood Falls and a Swiftwater Cliffs, even though you have less mana in the second case.
Manamorphose can help smooth colors, but if you really depend on it for that, you might end up sandbagging them until you need that splash color spell because it's the only way to cast it. In that case you aren't using them to draw into your "business" spells, and maybe simply having more land would actually be better.
Ok, one last thing. If we could effectively run 50 card decks in a 60-card-deck format with no downsides, we would. We'd see our most powerful cards more often, and therefore win more often. But there are downsides. Manamorphose is like a Bauble, and those don't come free. Back in the day, Legacy Burn players would toss around the idea of a Bauble Burn build, using only the most efficient Burn spells and the rest of the deck filled with Street Wraith, Manamorphose, Mishra's Bauble, etc.
Ok, let's say you draw an opener with 1 land, 2 spells, and four self-replacing "free" cards. What does that mean? Did you have an ideal mix of spells and land at the top? Would you be flooded or screwed? You'd effectively have to decide whether to mull while knowing only 3 cards in your opening 7.
Interesting point worth considering. Good rant tho...you are correct. I've been doing a bit of testing and probes might just not be what we want. It doesn't give us room for our business spells.
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2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
My splash color (red) eventually came mostly from gainlands. It's ok that they come into play tapped because I don't tend to need them early, and it's better that they're duals because those mana sources can, and often are, used to cast other colored spells.
On the other hand the color I needed first (white) had the most basics because they could come down early and be used immediately, and it was ok that they couldn't be tapped for other colors because I often needed to use them for on-color spells.
One additional wrinkle here is that fetches are great to reset the topdeck after a Ponder or Brainstorm, but I still really appreciate the flexibility of gainlands especially in a deck with a low land count. Having two Islands, a Forest, and a Mountain can be more limiting than two Thornwood Falls and a Swiftwater Cliffs, even though you have less mana in the second case.
Manamorphose can help smooth colors, but if you really depend on it for that, you might end up sandbagging them until you need that splash color spell because it's the only way to cast it. In that case you aren't using them to draw into your "business" spells, and maybe simply having more land would actually be better.
Ok, let's say you draw an opener with 1 land, 2 spells, and four self-replacing "free" cards. What does that mean? Did you have an ideal mix of spells and land at the top? Would you be flooded or screwed? You'd effectively have to decide whether to mull while knowing only 3 cards in your opening 7.
I'll stop rambling now.
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.