Leyline of Sanctity is like a white Blood Moon, it can 'win' a good number of matchups on its own (Burn, Titanshift, Storm, Ad Nauseam), and give some trouble to others, but I don't think you really need it in Hatebears.
I wouldn't run Scavenging Ooze in the board. It's a good and flexible card, maindeckable. If you want GY hate, use Rest in Peace
Also, why Spellskite?
these are my suggestions:
-3 Dryad Militant
+1 Scavenging Ooze
+1 Thalia
+1 Horizon Canopy
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Shocklands (1 of each)
3 Basics (1 of each)
5 Fastlands/Grove (4 B, 4 R, 2 G)
1 flex slot (Dryad Arbor, Kessig Wolf Run, Gemstone Caverns, or another random land you feel like running)
It looked great on paper, but playing with it, it was really painful.
The other upside for me was the easier cost, regarding colors. Getting R and B at the same time is easier than BB. If SG were 1RB, it would be better than LL. The downside is obviously the cmc in a low land count deck like Living End, getting the fourth land by turn 4 is not an easy task, even when you cycle. That's why I did the numbers, maybe someone using Lost Legacy couldn't cast it in time because of the double color requirement.
Regarding the manabase, without Blood Moon I would run something like:
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Shocklands
8 Fastlands/Grove (5 B, 7 R, 4 G)
If you want to cut the Mire for some utility land, I would adjust the fastlands/grove accordingly
I suppose I should include Lost Legacy over Slaughter Games just since it can come out when most effective. Good call, I'll jam 2 into the board.
This got me thinking, I had Slaughter Games because there was a RUG Scapeshift in my meta, but the double black in Lost Legacy does count. I did a quick (and I hope, somehow correct) calculations for the chances of having the right mana for LL and SG in turns 3 and 4 (12 and 13 draws). I also did it for LL in turn 4, just to compare it to turn 4 SG. The charts are in function of the amount of Black mana for Lost Legacy, and for Slaughter games the odds of having a R source and a B source at the same time (quite high for turn 4, if you ask me). As a simplification, I assumed that the deck has the same amount of R and B sources
But I also need to take into account the fact that I need 4 lands to cast Slaughter Games, and only 3 for Lost Legacy (with 19 in the deck). The numbers are:
-3 lands after 12 draws (turn 3 Lost Legacy): 81.40%
-3 lands after 13 draws (turn 4 Lost Legacy): 86.30%
-4 lands after 13 draws (turn 4 Slaughter Games): 65.30%
Changing the charts with those probabilities, I now have to look at a manabase and see the different chances of casting either with the amount of colored lands there. For example, for this list the chances are:
-turn 3 Lost Legacy: 68.29%
-turn 4 Lost Legacy: 75.51%
-turn 4 Slaughter Games: 62.71%
Of course, all of this assuming you actually draw Lost Legacy/Slaughter Games
edit: also, Simian Spirit Guide does modify the numbers, I think it favors Slaughter Games slightly
The manabase is probably the part where we could most easily reach a consensus.
Stock manabase for people playing with blood moon, stock manabase for people playing without.
Probably also one of the areas most worth improving, being able to cycle everything on time and easily makes everything much smoother, lets you draw your other cards, and generally just makes the deck faster.
For the BM manabase this is what I have:
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Shocklands (1 of each)
3 Basics (1 of each)
5 Fastlands/Grove (4 B, 4 R, 2 G)
1 flex slot (Dryad Arbor, Kessig Wolf Run, Gemstone Caverns, or another random land you feel like running)
Not particuly busted, but solid all around. Fits in a lot of different archetypes, great cube card. Solemn Simulacrum won't win you the game, but he is the guy you share a look and nod slightly when the team is celebrating victory.
I have a Sylvan Safekeeper and Ranger of Eos. I feel bad for Terry Soh, all the invitation cards are well known (with some being cube/legacy powerhouse) except for Rakdos Augermage, I had never even heard of it and its fairly lackluster (if not mildly intesting).
I feel bad for Kai Budde
The original Onslaught Artwork was perceived by many players including Budde as ugly. An alternative artwork was made for a DCI promotional printing of the card. The alternate art was later reused when the card was reprinted as a Timeshifted card in Time Spiral
Frank Karsten has an article from SCG(i think) with a bit of a breakdown on how to do "population" math to find the right amount of lands, the same math could be used for cyclers.
I believe it was posted by memorylapse in the 8rack thread.
Yup, in the CFB website. You can use it to find the right amount of anything (removal, a 1-drop for your aggro deck, etc). You can also use an hypergeometric calculator (lots of them online) to analyze your deck, for example, the probability of having a Cascader in turn 3 or drawing a Living End in your opening hand. It's an useful resource, Chapin talks about it in his book too.
~18 cyclers to have 3 by turn 3 makes sense, since most decks also run 18 lands to get 3 by turn 3.
You forget about at least 2 LE in your generic deck, which leaves room for only ~12 cards
the Living Ends are part of the blanks Dead in hand, don't cycle, cascade or generate mana. And it doesn't matter how deep in your deck is the LE for the analysis, the only thing you care is if you draw a cascader (barring the marginal situation of drawing your 3 LE in 0.3% of your games)
Well, one could separate the games when you draw a SSG (allowing to cycle an extra card, if you happen to have it... but then you have to take into account the chances of having a fourth cycler) or having Street Wraith as one of your 3 cyclers (cycles for free, if you have another cycler you can use the mana in it) but it will be marginal. The thing is that Street Wraith makes Death's Shadow a ~56 card deck, but in LE most of the times you are going to be cycling, so all the cyclers thin the library at the cost of doing what the deck wants to do anyway. Roughly, those are the numbers for 18~28 generic 1 mana cyclers, 8 generic cascaders, 19 generic lands (you don't worry about the color), and the rest blanks. Imagine your deck as
18 Horror of the broken lands
8 Violent Outburst
19 City of Brass
15 Blanks
I did a quick math with a calculator for what one could call 'the race hand', something you want against Storm for example, just to see how often could the deck pull something like that. Someone with better knowledge can do a similation with more variables. I remember reading a paper about the perfect Legacy Belcher deck in thesource, it was really cool to see a scientific approach about a MTG deck
I was curious and did some math about the chances of getting 3 cyclers as you untap for your third turn (considering the draw of the previous cycler), and not accounting the hands you get 0 cyclers (small amount) or mulligans the numbers are:
amount chance
18 0,664
19 0,68
20 0,722
21 0,762
22 0,796
23 0,821
24 0,856
25 0,881
26 0,902
27 0,92
28 0,936
If you combine this with the fact you can get at least one cascader by turn 3 in 81% of hands, even with only 18 cycling dudes you get a 'perfect' hand of 3 cyclers and a cascader by turn 3 roughly half of your games. I was pretty surprised
It is not a popular deck and it won't be. It's a fair deck that just drops bears and wants to interact with your opponent's card, that's why it's called hatebears and not aggrobears . It doesn't have as much 'oops I win' hands as other decks, even other fair decks like classic Jund/Abzan can go Thoughtseize into Tarmogoyf into Liliana and wreck a bad matchup. The cards are weaker in a vacuum. This is a very Legacy-esque deck, in the way you can't just pick it and hope to crush a tournament. It rewards deep knowledge of the metagame and how to interact with it.
Take Wescoe as an example, the guys love to play WW and had good tournament results with Hatebears, and you have some players doing well in SCG opens and somebody in this very thread had success in MOL a lot with it (I don't recall your name, sorry mate).
It's a very rewarding deck, and you can outplay people not knowing your cards/interaction. If you are into the Aggro-Disruption kind of deck, this is for you. I'd rather jam some control or combo deck, but I enjoy this archetype too.
I wouldn't SB Blood Moon against Affinity, a colorless deck that happens to run Blood Moon in the board Also, do you want it to control their manlands? Aren't the Fulminators you are cutting for BM the same?
Cool to hear good things about Hollow One. I wouldn't run it along with other 2 mana cyclers, but it does cycle and it is good when you can't use your GY in game 2 and 3.
Regarding Ingot Chewer, it's not powerful like Shatterstorm, Stony Silence, Choke, a Leyline or Blood Moon, but it does its work and fits the gameplan. It buys time hitting Cranial Plating, and maybe you can do a jedi play targeting their Ravager and giving them the option to sac everything (pseudo wrath of god), or nothing (then you LE them). They can sac a few dudes and keep others, but it feels like playing Fact or Fiction or Gifts Ungiven, like a minigame inside the actual game. Affinity is a hard matchup, gotta play tight
I feel that our primer needs a bit of an update. A lot of people will be looking this deck up as we gain traction competitively. I feel the current one barely represents the deck anymore.
Especially as the deck splits into two different decks. 5c and Jund are fundamentally dissimilar game plans. I value Fulminator enough to say that.
Updating the Primer with all the new dudes is a good idea!
I know how annoying these kinds of posts can be, so forgive me, but...
I own a Dredge mana-base with 4 Wooded Foothills, 4 Bloodstained Mire, 2 Blackcleave Cliffs, and 4 Copperline Gorge (with the Jund shocks as well). What is the best mana-base I can make without buying Groves and Verdant Catacombs? I plan eventually to own those things, but I have to buy the deck in pieces.
Thanks for your time and brief patience.
With the lands you have I would run:
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blackcleave Cliff
2 Copperline Gorge
1 Blooming Marsh or Forbbiden Orchard (quite cheap, gives you a nice amount of black sources)
The main point of the "5C version" is to play the best 1-mana cyclers and Ardent Plea over Demonic Dread since it doesn't need any target
(and can't be "countered" by spot removal).
If you are saying that destroying the creature you target with Demonic Dread will somehow stop the LE, it won't. Regardless, needed a target to cascade is not that nice
^I made the switch to 4x leyline of sanctity. I like the blood moon package you have using the pale recluse and twisted abomb. Havent tried it out yet. I'm only wondering if you have had games yet where you have only had access to and had a desert cerodon stranded in your hand or a horror of the broken lands because all you can find is copperline gorge?
You will have games like that, you can't always have the color you like because of the diminishing returns of adding another source to your manabase. You can minimize it, though (around ~85% of having what you need)
For example, having at least one copy of some card in your opening 7 with X copies in your deck (for example: a removal, a 1-drop, a red source):
sources chances increase
8 65.4 -
9 70.0 4.6
10 74.1 4.1
11 77.8 3.7
12 80.9 3.1
13 83.7 2.8
14 86.1 2.4
15 88.2 2.1
16 90.1 1.9
17 91.7 1.6
at certain amount of sources, it's not worth adding an extra one.
This way, one could craft the 'perfect' manabase for a list if you know where to draw the line (how far you would like to go with the %)
What are good cards to use against elves and other wide fast decks? Affinity also gives my deck trouble!
Engineered Explosives is good vs Affinity, Elves, Merfolk, Bogles, and other random aggro decks. Affinity is not a good matchup, you need to use your Ghost Quarter on their Nexi, Path the dudes you can't handle (Dromoka's Command works here too), surprise their fliers with Mindcensor, Gryff and even Stirring Wildwood. And obv, Stony Silence is really, really good.
Hatebears is a metagame deck, you can tune it to face anything... It's always a good option, but a fair one (it's just a bunch of bears)
I wouldn't run Scavenging Ooze in the board. It's a good and flexible card, maindeckable. If you want GY hate, use Rest in Peace
Also, why Spellskite?
these are my suggestions:
-3 Dryad Militant
+1 Scavenging Ooze
+1 Thalia
+1 Horizon Canopy
SB:
-2 Scavenging Ooze
-3 Spellskite
-4 Leyline of Sanctity
+2 Rest in Peace
+1 Celestial Purge
+1 Blessed Alliance
+1 Creeping Corrosion
+2 Engineered Explosives
+2 Burrenton Forge Tender
Keep in mind that is was for Blood Moon in the maindeck
Wasn't it for Cryptic Command?
Regarding the manabase, without Blood Moon I would run something like:
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Shocklands
8 Fastlands/Grove (5 B, 7 R, 4 G)
If you want to cut the Mire for some utility land, I would adjust the fastlands/grove accordingly
This got me thinking, I had Slaughter Games because there was a RUG Scapeshift in my meta, but the double black in Lost Legacy does count. I did a quick (and I hope, somehow correct) calculations for the chances of having the right mana for LL and SG in turns 3 and 4 (12 and 13 draws). I also did it for LL in turn 4, just to compare it to turn 4 SG. The charts are in function of the amount of Black mana for Lost Legacy, and for Slaughter games the odds of having a R source and a B source at the same time (quite high for turn 4, if you ask me). As a simplification, I assumed that the deck has the same amount of R and B sources
But I also need to take into account the fact that I need 4 lands to cast Slaughter Games, and only 3 for Lost Legacy (with 19 in the deck). The numbers are:
-3 lands after 12 draws (turn 3 Lost Legacy): 81.40%
-3 lands after 13 draws (turn 4 Lost Legacy): 86.30%
-4 lands after 13 draws (turn 4 Slaughter Games): 65.30%
Changing the charts with those probabilities, I now have to look at a manabase and see the different chances of casting either with the amount of colored lands there. For example, for this list the chances are:
-turn 3 Lost Legacy: 68.29%
-turn 4 Lost Legacy: 75.51%
-turn 4 Slaughter Games: 62.71%
Of course, all of this assuming you actually draw Lost Legacy/Slaughter Games
edit: also, Simian Spirit Guide does modify the numbers, I think it favors Slaughter Games slightly
For the BM manabase this is what I have:
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Shocklands (1 of each)
3 Basics (1 of each)
5 Fastlands/Grove (4 B, 4 R, 2 G)
1 flex slot (Dryad Arbor, Kessig Wolf Run, Gemstone Caverns, or another random land you feel like running)
I feel bad for Kai Budde
Yup, in the CFB website. You can use it to find the right amount of anything (removal, a 1-drop for your aggro deck, etc). You can also use an hypergeometric calculator (lots of them online) to analyze your deck, for example, the probability of having a Cascader in turn 3 or drawing a Living End in your opening hand. It's an useful resource, Chapin talks about it in his book too.
this is what I'm running too. I don't like the turbo version, I'd rather play something like Storm...
the Living Ends are part of the blanks
18 Horror of the broken lands
8 Violent Outburst
19 City of Brass
15 Blanks
I did a quick math with a calculator for what one could call 'the race hand', something you want against Storm for example, just to see how often could the deck pull something like that. Someone with better knowledge can do a similation with more variables. I remember reading a paper about the perfect Legacy Belcher deck in thesource, it was really cool to see a scientific approach about a MTG deck
How many cycling creatures are you running?
amount chance
18 0,664
19 0,68
20 0,722
21 0,762
22 0,796
23 0,821
24 0,856
25 0,881
26 0,902
27 0,92
28 0,936
If you combine this with the fact you can get at least one cascader by turn 3 in 81% of hands, even with only 18 cycling dudes you get a 'perfect' hand of 3 cyclers and a cascader by turn 3 roughly half of your games. I was pretty surprised
Take Wescoe as an example, the guys love to play WW and had good tournament results with Hatebears, and you have some players doing well in SCG opens and somebody in this very thread had success in MOL a lot with it (I don't recall your name, sorry mate).
It's a very rewarding deck, and you can outplay people not knowing your cards/interaction. If you are into the Aggro-Disruption kind of deck, this is for you. I'd rather jam some control or combo deck, but I enjoy this archetype too.
Cool to hear good things about Hollow One. I wouldn't run it along with other 2 mana cyclers, but it does cycle and it is good when you can't use your GY in game 2 and 3.
Regarding Ingot Chewer, it's not powerful like Shatterstorm, Stony Silence, Choke, a Leyline or Blood Moon, but it does its work and fits the gameplan. It buys time hitting Cranial Plating, and maybe you can do a jedi play targeting their Ravager and giving them the option to sac everything (pseudo wrath of god), or nothing (then you LE them). They can sac a few dudes and keep others, but it feels like playing Fact or Fiction or Gifts Ungiven, like a minigame inside the actual game. Affinity is a hard matchup, gotta play tight
Updating the Primer with all the new dudes is a good idea!
With the lands you have I would run:
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blackcleave Cliff
2 Copperline Gorge
1 Blooming Marsh or Forbbiden Orchard (quite cheap, gives you a nice amount of black sources)
If you are saying that destroying the creature you target with Demonic Dread will somehow stop the LE, it won't. Regardless, needed a target to cascade is not that nice
You will have games like that, you can't always have the color you like because of the diminishing returns of adding another source to your manabase. You can minimize it, though (around ~85% of having what you need)
For example, having at least one copy of some card in your opening 7 with X copies in your deck (for example: a removal, a 1-drop, a red source):
sources chances increase
8 65.4 -
9 70.0 4.6
10 74.1 4.1
11 77.8 3.7
12 80.9 3.1
13 83.7 2.8
14 86.1 2.4
15 88.2 2.1
16 90.1 1.9
17 91.7 1.6
at certain amount of sources, it's not worth adding an extra one.
This way, one could craft the 'perfect' manabase for a list if you know where to draw the line (how far you would like to go with the %)
edit: god the formatting
Engineered Explosives is good vs Affinity, Elves, Merfolk, Bogles, and other random aggro decks. Affinity is not a good matchup, you need to use your Ghost Quarter on their Nexi, Path the dudes you can't handle (Dromoka's Command works here too), surprise their fliers with Mindcensor, Gryff and even Stirring Wildwood. And obv, Stony Silence is really, really good.
Hatebears is a metagame deck, you can tune it to face anything... It's always a good option, but a fair one (it's just a bunch of bears)