Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 19:08:49 GMT From: Arthur Kimes Subject: Baubles - Are they worth it? Estabillo, Bernardo said ... ] I don't know how long you've been on this list but, a few months ago, ] someone did a Bauble deck test. Since there seems to be a good deal of interest in this subject, I'm reposting edited versions of the original, relevant notes. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 14:58:24 -0800 From: Arthur Kimes Subject: Urza's Bauble experiment There's been some discussion on Urza's Bauble (UB). Is it a waste of space and time to use it or does it's subtle deck shrinking effect provide a competitive edge? I don't know for sure but I want to find out! If UB can help, then in a battle of two similar decks, the deck that takes advantage of UBs should prevail. But if you play a deck with 4 UBs vs. one with none it might take a long time to learn something. So lets go for an extreme case - a THIRTY BAUBLE deck! First, the base line deck. A simple G/R deck with critters, critter-boosters and direct damage. Forest 10 Grizzly Bears 4 Mountain 10 Llanowar Elves 4 Mountain Valley 2 Scryb Sprites 4 War Mammoths 4 Giant Growth 4 Hill Giant 4 Blood Lust 4 Storm Shaman 2 Lightning Bolt 4 Fireball 4 Then a 30 card version of the same deck with 30 Urza's Baubles added. With a key difference. The whole point of deck shrinkage is to get to your key cards faster. In the deck above the key cards seem to be Giant Growths, Bolts, Fireballs and Mammoths. Elves, Hill Giants and Blood Lusts seem less important. So the Baubled version of the deck will have a higher percentage of the clutch cards at the expense of the so-so cards. Forest 5 Grizzly Bears 2 Mountain 5 Llanowar Elves 1 Mountain Valley 1 Scryb Sprites 2 War Mammoths 3 Giant Growth 3 Hill Giant 1 Lightning Bolt 3 Storm Shaman 1 Fireball 3 Urza's Bauble 30 If you just played deck1 vs. deck2 without bauble, I'd expect the 30 card deck to win most of the games. It would be drawing 50% more giant growths and bolts. Now you COULD make deck2 with 60 cards, no baubles and just include more giant growths and such. But then you run into tournament deck construction limitations - can't put 6 Giant Growths in a deck! Cantrips, like UB, may provide a sneaky way past the 4 card limit. The question is, is the half turn loss of time from the cantrips worth the deck shrinkage. I intend to make these 2 decks and ask volunteers to play one while I play the other one (I could play solitaire but it's hard to bluff myself). I'm asking other students of the game to help me out here, make the same decks, play them and report the results to me. After a while I'll post a summary to the list. - - - - - - Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:09:10 -0800 From: Arthur Kimes Subject: Urza's Bauble experiment Peter Eng said ... ] Remember that "cheap starter deck" that was posted a day or two ago? ] Take the same thing, but take two of every spell/critter, and replace ] them with Baubles. Play the original against the Baubled version. That's not going to accomplish anything. If one deck has the same ratio of "key cards" as other except for baubles then it's like playing a 60 card deck against a 120 card deck (where the 120 card deck has the exact same cards as the 60 only twice as many). The reason to use cantrips as deck tighteners (as opposed to using them because the spell actually does something you want to do in that deck) is to get your better cards faster. That's why I made slight changes to the composition of the baubled deck I posted. Left out the bloodlusts, put in more bolts and giant growths. 3 bolts in a "30" card deck (30 other cards and 30 baubles) should be equivalent to 6 bolts in a 60 card deck. But ARE they? There's a loss of time while you cycle thru baubles. - - - - - Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 06:21:06 -0800 From: Arthur Kimes Subject: Urza's Bauble experiment After many solitaire games and matches vs. other players (we both played with each deck) the baubled deck won 18 games to the normal decks 9. Evidence enough for me. - - - - - 27 games is probably not enough to prove the case but nobody else has posted test results to the contrary. If you are interested in this test I suggest using the EXACT same decks. Speaking of cantrips in general, I saw a deck from the nationals posted on the Magic Dojo. It was a R/U 20 cantrip deck. Must have been a good deck because, judging from later tournament reports, it was widely copied. 12 of the cantrips were 4 each of Portent, Brainstorm and Impulse. I forget what the other 8 were. **Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya; You stole my tagline; Prepare to die.**