I'm sure you know everyone who plays Magic doesn't do so competitively. Forget the player archetypes: the Timmies, the Johnnies, the Spikes, etc. No. Today I'm writing for the average, run-of-the-mill player. The guy who doesn't bring Jund to FNM to wreck the other players. The guy who's cool with playing Raging Goblin instead of Goblin Guide, not because Guide gives land to the other player, but because Raging Goblin is his favorite card.
Besides the obvious power difference, about four dollars separates these cards--but is it worth the casual gamer's candy money?
Yes, if you're a casual player, this is for you.
I'm a big forum person and I love the social aspect of Magic the Gathering. Many times a player will post in a competitive deck forum but "be on a budget" or only play around the kitchen table. I've seen many monored burn decks or mono-X control decks that want to be fixed up by the poster.
When a competitive players sees this, besides the initial thoughts of swapping that Iona's Judgment for a Path to Exile, one of the first suggestions is to utilize fetchlands (and if you don't know what that is, it's a land with only the ability costing its tapping and one life to be sacrificed to search for a card with a basic land type: see Arid Mesa, Flooded Strand, etc.).
Well, it has cool art at least
Not to fix manabases, mind you. But for "deck thinning".
Keep in mind that this is for casual players. Some players spend pocket change they have saved up. Many players get hand-me-downs from other players.
I doubt a fetchland will get handed down.
My point is that it is difficult for a casual player to acquire fetchlands. Yet many players insist that if a deck is monocolored, then that deck should run fetchlands to increase the chances of drawing a desired card.
By how much is the question. And I will use math to show it (because noone can argue with math).
The starting conditions are the following:
The deck has 60 cards.
The deck has fetchlands.
The deck has lands able to be fetched by the given fetchlands.
Our goal is to:
Figure out how much deck thinning increases the chances of drawing a specific card run in 4-copies and 3-copies.
The process:
We are given a 60-card deck. With the initial starting draw of 7 cards (important note: mulligans will affect the odds, but I will not be covering them), the deck is now at 53 cards.
Also assume that the desired card is not drawn.
Consider the scenario where you don't play fetchlands and draw one card per turn. Here are your odds of drawing a card with four copies in your deck:
4/53 = 7.54% T1
4/52 = 7.69% T2
4/51 = 7.84% T3
4/50 = 8.00% T4
4/49 = 8.16% T5
Consider that a fetchland was used to thin the deck. The deck size is decreased by 1. Therefore, the new odds are as follows:
4/52 = 7.69% T1
4/51 = 7.84% T2
4/50 = 8.00% T3
4/49 = 8.16% T4
4/48 = 8.33% T5
The statistics show that there is roughly a .15-.20% increase in drawing a card with four copies per turn when using a fetchland once.
.
I'll show the same statistics for a deck with three copies:
3/53 = 5.66% T1
3/52 = 5.76% T2
3/51 = 5.88% T3
3/50 = 6.00% T4
3/49 = 6.12% T5
3/52 = 5.76% T1
3/51 = 5.88% T2
3/50 = 6.00% T3
3/49 = 6.12% T4
3/48 = 6.25% T5
The results show that using a fetchland increases your chances to draw a desired card by roughly .10-.13%.
As the number of copies of the desired copies goes down, the overall percentage to draw it goes down. Likewise, the effect fetchland thinning has also goes down.
I'll demonstrate with the most applicable example to the casual player. Many casual decks run singleton copies of cards. Hence, their chances of drawing a card from the get-go is 1/60, or 1.66%.
Starting from an initial size of 60, here are the chances of drawing singletons:
1/60 = 1.66%
1/59 = 1.69%
1/58 = 1.72%
1/57 = 1.75%
1/56 = 1.78%
That's right, with each draw, there is only a .03% increase. Using a fetchland successfully will increase each percentage to draw something by .03%.
The important caveat to realize is that these past results only showed the statistics after utilizing one fetchland. If you use more than one, the deck size is reduced by one more.
And I haven't even factored in card draw or other deck thinning.
So anytime you feel the need to add fetchlands to your deck, consider your goal. If you're trying to win a PTQ or some other huge event, by all means pay that extra life and cash to use that fetchland for that extra fraction of a percent. Otherwise, odds are you're better off with just the basic land you were going to fetch.
Until next time,
Follow me on Twitter @shadowsketched
Obviously is not statistically significant if you use one fetchland. But if your deck has the eight appropiate fetchlands, and Terramorphic Expanse, and Rampant Growth or spells of the like, the math obviously shows that the percentage is increased way more than your results. Consider your initial conditions, but let's assume that the deck has Rampant Growth. A game could go like this:
ReplyDeleteDraw starting hand (Deck size: 53, chances of drawing desired card = 4/53 = 7.54%)
T1 Fetchland (Deck size: 52, chances of drawing desired card = 4/52 = 7.69%)
T2 Draw, Fetchland, Rampant Growth (Deck size: 49, chances of drawing desired card = 4/49 = 8.16%)
As we can see, we have improved in one turn our chances in 0.47%. It's not that ONE fetchland is statistically significant, it's the redundancy of thinning effects what will be relevant for improving your chances of drawing the desired card.
I totally agree that if you have a mono-colored deck, you shouldn't buy fetches until you have an otherwise optimal deck, especially as a budget player. I would prefer to play a Kargan Dragonlord over a R/x fetchland in a Mono-Red deck if I didn't have much money and had the money for one chase card, for example.
ReplyDeleteI think there's another factor too, maybe not one you can breakdown as easy (or maybe you can?) -
ReplyDeleteFetchlands thin your deck, but more importantly, they thin out your LANDS. i.e. you are less likely to draw another land on later turns, since there are fewer remaining in the library. Rather than focusing on just the one desired card to draw, you have just better odds at drawing a spell/creature instead of a useless land.
@Gabriel
ReplyDeleteTrue. With the example you gave, there is still less than a 1% increase in the probability. I realize it is only 2 turns, so you can use future turns to further increase the chances. But stepping outside of the math box, what deck besides combo would continually want to draw/thin their deck without responding to their opponent's plays? Control can do so to a degree, but that's assuming that the opponent isn't coming in with an early onslaught. The deck thinning only shines in the long game where the small percentages stack up.
Also consider that green, black, and blue can easily thin their deck. White has few draw spells, and Red has Browbeat. Not every deck will run green, black, or blue, so they can't benefit from additional deck thinning.
@Salivanth
Exactly. The ultimate I wanted to point to make was that fetchlands only increased probability by an extremely insignificant amount. Plus drawing cards means nothing if you draw into cards that don't help you win.
@Anonymous
Right. But during those later turns, you'll already have drawn a significant portion of your deck plus possibly have used other effects to draw your deck. Those small percentages add up to more significant numbers.
You'll handle it the same way though:
The number of desired copies left in your library (divided by) the number of cards in your library
I want to bring up an outlying case though. Typically, you'll run out of fetchlands before drawing or playing all the basic lands in a game.
At this point, your fetchlands become dead draws.
Not 100% sure how to calculate that in stats though, but I'll think about it for a bit.
Here's the perspective I look at this through:
ReplyDeleteWhen you fetch a land, you substitute drawing the card you fetched with another random card in your deck.
What are the chances that you drew -that- basic Forest? 1/N, where N is the size of your deck during that draw step. To clarify, there is a 1/N (1/52 if you fetch as your first play) that using a fetchland has -any effect at all- on your draws.
The real value in fetchlands is in their interaction with mechanics. Plated Geopede is okay if you're playing all basic Mountains, but he's amazing when you have 8 Zendikar fetches and some Panoramas too. Knight of the Reliquary was a mediocre beater before Zendikar came out, now she's probably the best 3-drop in Standard. It's not worth the life payment to play fetches in a monocolor deck (3% of your life isn't worth a 3% chance of improving a draw), unless you're playing Geopedes or Knights or something like that.
The chance of running your deck out of basics is a function of the number of fetches and number of basics. Once the sum of fetches and basics drawn exceeds the number of basics in the deck, you turn off your fetchlands. There's a bit of a combinatorial explosion going on... say you're playing 12 basics and 8 fetches. You have to compute the odds of drawing 7 fetches and 5 basics, 6 fetches and 6 basics, 5 fetches and 7 basics, 4 fetches and 8 basics... and you could compute the odds of then drawing that dead fetch, too!
Ok I'll agree that mechanics-wise, fetchlands are vital to a deck. Not every deck plays Terravore, Geopede, Knights of the Reliquary, etc.
ReplyDeleteContext-aside, fetching a land replacing a draw. It's another way to look at it, but I see it as mathematically the same. You're still reducing your deck size by one.
Oh and I figured it was something complicated with running out of basics. Even then, you can compute the number of lands not fetchable by fetchlands. Math explosion indeed.
Well you have your odds set up to draw a specific spell when usually I want land out of the deck by turn 7-8 and don't really want to draw anymore. It's those times when anyone of your 8 removal spells would save you but you peel a land. I agree it's statistically pretty small and fetches are best with KotR or Landfall but it is a cummulitive + to percentages with each fetch.
ReplyDelete"fetchland increases your chances to draw a desired card"
ReplyDeleteI don't care if it's 0.1% or 10% - if it increases my odds of drawing a card then that's better than no effect at all. Is it significant increase? No, but it's an increase still.
those percentages propogate each turn, meaning if you fetch once for a single, you have a 7.69% chance of drawing it, as opposed to a 7.54%, a .15% improvement. That number only continues to get better, and if we add up the percentages (I know that's not exactly how to calculate it, but I don't have time to calculate it atm), you'll see that on the 2nd draw after a fetch, you have a .3% improvement, then a .45% improvement, then a .6% improvement. If you fetch twice in the first two turns, you have a .45% chance of drawing the card you want, and for each subsequent draw your chances of drawing the card you want increases by atleast .3%, meaning that after 5 draws your chances will improve by over 2%. 2% in 5 turns is more than good enough for me to play all the fetches that my deck is capable of playing.
ReplyDelete@previous posters:
ReplyDeleteI'll agree that the cumulative effect of fetchlands make them playable. However, the main point is to help casual players realize that fetchlands used to thin is the last priority when making a deck; their money is better spent on getting good nonland cards.
@Jacobson51
Ok, I have a question for you: What would you consider a good fetchland to fetchable land ratio?
See, playing all the fetches that your deck is capable of playing is a good idea, but how would you measure that? Even the simplest idea of playing solely fetchable lands and fetchlands is a "combinatorial explosion".
That's not even factoring utility lands, enter-the-battlefield-tapped lands, manlands, etc.
At this point, the math becomes a nightmare and playtesting serves as a better metric, but not by much. Playtesting has the additional factor of having a live opponent, so he can contribute to you needing to play certain lands at a certain time or destroy lands you play.
i would disagree that fetchlands should be purchased after you gain good non-land cards for a number of reasons.
ReplyDelete1. fetchlands will retain value better than many new non-land cards because of the demand for fetchlands in eternal formats.
2. fetchlands are good in almost any deck that has at least one color in common with the fetchland, whereas specific non-land cards are used in fewer decklists.
3. more serious players with larger collections are much more willing to trade you the cards youre looking for if you have non-basic lands to trade for them, as non-basic lands are staples in many formats.
you have also failed to mention the fact that most casual players run multicolored decks and fetchlands are the best fixers around, allowing you to search for either of the basics named on the fetchland, or any non-basic with the fetchlands landtype such as dryad arbor, murmoring bosk, any shock or dual land.
i would also like to reiterate the fact that late in the game drawing any thread or destruction is much better than drawing a land.
i know you want to believe that paying $10 for a fetchland is a bad idea for new players, but its actualy one of the best investments they can make in magic.