Here are my reasons why I rank Dauthi Marauder higher than Lifebane Zombie:
- 2B instead of 1BB is a huge plus.
- Shadow pretty much equals being completely unblockable, while around 20% of the creatures in cube can block an intimidate creature.
- Being a zombie is only a very minor bonus that will rarely matter.
- I dislike specific color hoser cards in cube. An effect like this will be completely irrelevant in many games.
The only thing truly in favor of Lifebane is that he lets you look at the opponent's hand. That is a nice bonus, but imo not worth the two big disadvantages that he has.
In the end, I don't think it matters much anymore, since black got several powerful 3-drops lately that push both Marauder and Lifebane down the list far enough to make them both unlikely inclusions.
It's just the easier cost and the better evasion. I like Lifebane more for the reasons you mentioned, but I see the appeal of the cost and reliability of the Marauder too.
May I ask you what exactly Dauthi Marauder have more than Lifebane Zombie? Some of you guys class them that way and some even did not mention Lifebane in there listing.
IMO, they are kind the same as a unblockable creatre, but Lifebane can't get you 2 for 1 sometimes while giving you some info about what's in your opponent's hand, can block and is also a Zombie, a thing that could matter if you're playing Gravecrawler. Is it just the 1BB factor? Is it that you find Intimate to be a big downside versus Shadow? I don't want to argue, I just wan't to know if I'm missing something.
Lifebane's evasion is visibly worse. Any black creature (including B/X) or artifact creature (even colored ones like Porcelain Legionnaire) can block it. Including many creatures that are played in control and midrange, the decks that want to block it.
Marauder can be blocked by about 4 creatures in most cubes, and they are aggressive creatures themselves (as they can't block others) so they will rarely be there to block it anyway. If Marauder is ever blocked, it's on an aggro mirror that is losing the race enough to resort to blocking.
At 3, requiring two colored mana is huge. If it was 3BB vs 4B I'd agree it's minimal, but at 3 it's too much. Lifebane can be played in monoblack and B/x aggro decks. Marauder can go in those and X/b aggro decks, so it's way more usable. And even when black is the main color, I'd still consider not running Lifebane if I wanted to included something like Wasteland.
Only Gravecrawler and Sarcomancy care about you playing zombies, and it's more a good upside than a requirement to play them. The cube has enough zombies (including tokens) so I don't think it's a relevant detail when evaluating a borderline creature. It's not like being human, which would help a couple of cards that needs the help to be playable themselves.
In the end, Marauder was just a good french vanilla that ended being cut recently (the last couple of years were really good for that slot), while Lifebane wasn't more than a quick (and failed) test when it came out.
I think you wildly underestimate the value of information. There's a reason why I want to include Gitaxian Probe in my Cube, and why Thoughtsieze is so absurd.
IMO, Lifebane Zombie is at least as valuable as Dauthi Marauder. In order to establish it together, we'll need to analyse different points. First, we'll need to evaluate respective unblockable rate of both cards, and second, we'll need to evaluate each upsides they bring considering the difference in mana cost.
First point is going to be huge, sorry for that, but the math scientist in myself cannot easily eat those kind of statement :
Shadow pretty much equals being completely unblockable, while around 20% of the creatures in cube can block an intimidate creature.
1) Unblockable rate :
Marauder is easy to evaluate since it has a almost 100% chance rate to hit. In fact, only shadow dudes or copy stuff could. So let's say he's having a 99% chance. In counterpart, LBZ cannot bring that same kind of safety, but it could be interesting to analyse how far he's really from it. In a linear point of view, we could simply say that 20% of the creatures could block it. It is true on paper, but not in practice. Let's see why. To demonstrate this, I'll bring stats from my own cube, but you could easily switch with yours and see.
To start, let's evaluate how many cards in the cube could in theory block the Zombie.
My cube does contains 40 black creatures, but one is LBZ, so we have to cut it in order to make the calculations right. There's also 5 oh them that can't block, so that brings the count to 34. Also, there's Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath, Sarcomancy and Bitterblossom that make black token creature plus Stillmoon Cavalier that is class as white in my cube. So this brings the stats back to 38.
We also need to consider the multi-colored black card to can push a blocker in front of LBZ. In fact, in my cube, there's 10. But I'll cut from those Progenitus because of its combo requirement. So that makes 9.
I add to this the 18 artifact creatures, including the colored ones. To make stats right, let's also add here Phantasmal Image, that can be black if wanted, and cut Blightsteel Colossus for the same reason as Progenitus. That makes 18.
So we are finally having a total of 65 cards that could block LBZ in a 600 cards cube. But we cannot just divide 65 by 599 and affirm that about 11% of the cards can block LBZ, cause that's not true in practice.
Let's analyse the odds. In order to that, we need to know that there's 10 guilds in Magic and that 4 of them include black mana. With that said, while having a 8-man table, we can assume by deduction that in most case, a maximum of 40% of players are going to be drafting black spells. With 8 players, that makes 3 black mages, including the LBZ drafter. In that way, we can assume that the black cards will be split approximately equally between those three, making them draft 33% of it.
To simplify it, let's say that the LBZ player is not running after artifacts and that all of them are split between the seven others. So now, we have 47 (38 + 9) black cards split between 3 black mages and 18 artifacts cards split between everyone except the LBZ player.
This way, we can determine that (33% of 47) + (33% of 47) + 18 will be what the LBZ player is going to face. That makes about 49 card. This represents 9,33% of the cube if we cut the cards pool proportion (45 / 360 x 600 = 75) the LBZ player is going to have.
This means that LBZ, after draft, will have a odds of 9,33% chance by game to be facing a card that could be able to block him. That's not a lot.
So the Marauder is having a 99% rate while the Zombie is having a 90,7% rate in worst case scenarios, and that's not much of a difference IMO.
Also, this probs calculation doesn't consider the fact that most player also cut good stuff while drafting, so there's a possibility that some valuable black cards get cut in the process, having the LBZ unblockable's stat increase as well.
(I know that all the 600 cards aren't going to be draft, but that's all about proportion and that fact doesn't change a thing here.)
2) Cost for what it brings
First comparison : For having 9,3% more chance of being blocked than the Marauder, LBZ as a zombie tribe attach to him, can block and trade with 3 toughness stuff.
Second comparison : The downside brings by switching from 1 colorless mana to one B mana on LBZ is counterbalance in most part by the info you're getting from opponent's hand and with the odds of getting permanently a card from it. In counterpart, the Marauder is more splashable.
(Little quote on the odds of getting a card : A quick math calculation demonstrate that my cube contains 115 of either white or green creatures. So assuming that the LBZ player isn't drafting any of those, he gets about 115/525 = 22% chance of hitting something. Quite nice though.)
Again sorry for diverging from main theme and for writing that huge thread but I couldn't resist, I love maths
I think you wildly underestimate the value of information. There's a reason why I want to include Gitaxian Probe in my Cube, and why Thoughtsieze is so absurd.
-AA
Amen, this game is a lot easier when you have perfect information.
I like my black section to have a lot of interesting utility and activated abilities, including Sac outlets. I think this guy is great but it's a clash in that choice in cube design. I think he gets a lot more appealing if you concentrate on filling your black section with aggressive beaters with tradeoffs; I feel like if I wanted to run Spawn of Mayhem, this could would be right there with him.
- 2B instead of 1BB is a huge plus.
- Shadow pretty much equals being completely unblockable, while around 20% of the creatures in cube can block an intimidate creature.
- Being a zombie is only a very minor bonus that will rarely matter.
- I dislike specific color hoser cards in cube. An effect like this will be completely irrelevant in many games.
The only thing truly in favor of Lifebane is that he lets you look at the opponent's hand. That is a nice bonus, but imo not worth the two big disadvantages that he has.
In the end, I don't think it matters much anymore, since black got several powerful 3-drops lately that push both Marauder and Lifebane down the list far enough to make them both unlikely inclusions.
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Lifebane's evasion is visibly worse. Any black creature (including B/X) or artifact creature (even colored ones like Porcelain Legionnaire) can block it. Including many creatures that are played in control and midrange, the decks that want to block it.
Marauder can be blocked by about 4 creatures in most cubes, and they are aggressive creatures themselves (as they can't block others) so they will rarely be there to block it anyway. If Marauder is ever blocked, it's on an aggro mirror that is losing the race enough to resort to blocking.
At 3, requiring two colored mana is huge. If it was 3BB vs 4B I'd agree it's minimal, but at 3 it's too much. Lifebane can be played in monoblack and B/x aggro decks. Marauder can go in those and X/b aggro decks, so it's way more usable. And even when black is the main color, I'd still consider not running Lifebane if I wanted to included something like Wasteland.
Only Gravecrawler and Sarcomancy care about you playing zombies, and it's more a good upside than a requirement to play them. The cube has enough zombies (including tokens) so I don't think it's a relevant detail when evaluating a borderline creature. It's not like being human, which would help a couple of cards that needs the help to be playable themselves.
In the end, Marauder was just a good french vanilla that ended being cut recently (the last couple of years were really good for that slot), while Lifebane wasn't more than a quick (and failed) test when it came out.
-AA
I use descriptive language. Assume that I'm being nice and respectful. (I'll tell you when I'm not.)
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First point is going to be huge, sorry for that, but the math scientist in myself cannot easily eat those kind of statement :
1) Unblockable rate :
Marauder is easy to evaluate since it has a almost 100% chance rate to hit. In fact, only shadow dudes or copy stuff could. So let's say he's having a 99% chance. In counterpart, LBZ cannot bring that same kind of safety, but it could be interesting to analyse how far he's really from it. In a linear point of view, we could simply say that 20% of the creatures could block it. It is true on paper, but not in practice. Let's see why. To demonstrate this, I'll bring stats from my own cube, but you could easily switch with yours and see.
To start, let's evaluate how many cards in the cube could in theory block the Zombie.
My cube does contains 40 black creatures, but one is LBZ, so we have to cut it in order to make the calculations right. There's also 5 oh them that can't block, so that brings the count to 34. Also, there's Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath, Sarcomancy and Bitterblossom that make black token creature plus Stillmoon Cavalier that is class as white in my cube. So this brings the stats back to 38.
We also need to consider the multi-colored black card to can push a blocker in front of LBZ. In fact, in my cube, there's 10. But I'll cut from those Progenitus because of its combo requirement. So that makes 9.
I add to this the 18 artifact creatures, including the colored ones. To make stats right, let's also add here Phantasmal Image, that can be black if wanted, and cut Blightsteel Colossus for the same reason as Progenitus. That makes 18.
So we are finally having a total of 65 cards that could block LBZ in a 600 cards cube. But we cannot just divide 65 by 599 and affirm that about 11% of the cards can block LBZ, cause that's not true in practice.
Let's analyse the odds. In order to that, we need to know that there's 10 guilds in Magic and that 4 of them include black mana. With that said, while having a 8-man table, we can assume by deduction that in most case, a maximum of 40% of players are going to be drafting black spells. With 8 players, that makes 3 black mages, including the LBZ drafter. In that way, we can assume that the black cards will be split approximately equally between those three, making them draft 33% of it.
To simplify it, let's say that the LBZ player is not running after artifacts and that all of them are split between the seven others. So now, we have 47 (38 + 9) black cards split between 3 black mages and 18 artifacts cards split between everyone except the LBZ player.
This way, we can determine that (33% of 47) + (33% of 47) + 18 will be what the LBZ player is going to face. That makes about 49 card. This represents 9,33% of the cube if we cut the cards pool proportion (45 / 360 x 600 = 75) the LBZ player is going to have.
This means that LBZ, after draft, will have a odds of 9,33% chance by game to be facing a card that could be able to block him. That's not a lot.
So the Marauder is having a 99% rate while the Zombie is having a 90,7% rate in worst case scenarios, and that's not much of a difference IMO.
Also, this probs calculation doesn't consider the fact that most player also cut good stuff while drafting, so there's a possibility that some valuable black cards get cut in the process, having the LBZ unblockable's stat increase as well.
(I know that all the 600 cards aren't going to be draft, but that's all about proportion and that fact doesn't change a thing here.)
2) Cost for what it brings
First comparison : For having 9,3% more chance of being blocked than the Marauder, LBZ as a zombie tribe attach to him, can block and trade with 3 toughness stuff.
Second comparison : The downside brings by switching from 1 colorless mana to one B mana on LBZ is counterbalance in most part by the info you're getting from opponent's hand and with the odds of getting permanently a card from it. In counterpart, the Marauder is more splashable.
(Little quote on the odds of getting a card : A quick math calculation demonstrate that my cube contains 115 of either white or green creatures. So assuming that the LBZ player isn't drafting any of those, he gets about 115/525 = 22% chance of hitting something. Quite nice though.)
Again sorry for diverging from main theme and for writing that huge thread but I couldn't resist, I love maths
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Amen, this game is a lot easier when you have perfect information.
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