I’ve found that the Elves are sufficient to ensure that the Seismic Assault gets out, which is another strike against the Blast. The trick is getting the Swans out successfully. I often had multiple Seismic Assaults on the board (which isn’t as bad as it sounds with 1 mana enchantment removal around). However, using Deny Reality to pull an Elf & an Assault is suboptimal. I’d like a way to avoid this.

The match I lost was to Red Deck Wins. First game just burned me faster than I could burn him. I won second game and the third was lost to a sided in Thought Hemorrhage, which in a fit of top-decking luck got both the Swans and the Ad Nauseam. I’m not sure there’s a decent strategy against Thought Hemorrhage, as any additional spell spells, like counters, dilute the effect of the cascade.

Another option I’m considering is the Reliquary Tower just in case you get an Ad Nauseam without the Assault in place, as I did once and had to discard a mess of land.

I’d like to know what other strategies people have, or if we’ll just have to race the hate if we want to play this deck.

First, I want to be clear that I don’t think your conclusions are wrong. Good hand to keep. The problem I have is how you arrive at that conclusion. More importantly, what your article is emphasising as important. I don’t think the effort to do the math to 1% is worthwile, and at the same time the article ignores or plays lipservice to the things that are important. That’s what I feel is misleading.

I’d propose the simple rule:

You should mulligan if:
In the game you are expecting, a random smaller hand is likely to be better than your current hand.

Let’s look at the things you aren’t paying real service to:
- you don’t discuss what you expect your opponent to be playing at all. You don’t say in this metagame I expect… or knowing my opponent I expect him to be playing…
- you hint that this hand is better than random hands if it draws out properly, but I’m not reading this as being a clear “this is probably a great hand if I draw out”.

Maybe I’m just not aware of the greater context of this article. But it seems to me that you barely noticed two really important parts of the background and the mulligan decision.Instead this article focuses on math.

A fair bit of math actually. You work out the percentages of drawing the right mana help to within a percentage point. And I have to ask if that level of precision is meaningful. Here’s a question you don’t answer: at what percentage do you throw back the hand. If you have a 78% percent chance of drawing out is that keepable? Maybe 77%? What about 76%?

I don’t think you can answer that question because I don’t think there is a good answer. The stats just don’t matter to the precision you are discussing. The bulk of the article (the mathy parts) should reasonably be replaced by your conclusion “(Keeping) is a good bet, so I kept.”

Unless you present an argument that is based on being that precise by saying something like “I keep if the odds of drawing the mana I need are 57% or better” then the exercise of narrowing down to a specific number is pretty much meaningless. Its a distraction, it is not the important part of the argument. You are going down a rabit hole to a depth that really doesn’t matter.

And that’s the fault I have with this article. You skip lightly over some really important things (expected matchup, what a random smaller hand is likely to look like) and are very focused on a level of precision that doesn’t matter.

Which I think is misleading.

The difference between the exact 79-80% number and my rough estimate that you’ll draw out somewhere between 7/8 (1-1/2*1/2*1/2) and 2/3rds (1-1/2*1/2*2/3) of the time isn’t meaningful. Its a good bet, keep the hand.

thx and keep going !!!

I, like a real man, played this deck before cascade. with a cheapo manabase (20 vivids/crumbling necropolis and some islands and mountains). In the tournament practice room, i hit about 1 50/50 win percentage, not super hot, but not awful. Of my five or so quees (8-mans), i dropped three first round, won a game in another, and took down the last. it was good times.
Man, i wish cascade came out earlier! the real problem was not finding the seismic. I played with ponders and pyroclasms, and a ravens crime. Game one is usually quite good for the deck. Faeires and doran were unwinnable, monored 60%, blightning 40%, tokens (most any, even b/w unless they get a quick sculler) is just over 50%, the rest 50/50. Mind you, this is my experience, and that can be chalked up to surprise and t3h nuuuubz in the tournament practice room, good players that know how to play against combo can be bad with most decks.

Anyways, thats my rant.

It’s an absolute scream to play, and, to all other broke dudes out there, can be about 20 tix (with sketchy vivid mana).
FUn, crazy deck. Thanks for covering this deck, sir