How many dragons to make dragon-reveal cards viable?
Standard forum
Posted on June 22, 2015, 2:33 a.m. by Jimmy_Chinchila
Silumgar's Scorn, Draconic Roar and Foul-Tongue Invocation see quite s bit of Standard play in their respective decks. The question I have is how many dragon creature cards would be needed (the minimum) to make getting the dragon-reveal bonus on these cards viable? Similarly, if I want to include 2 or 3 of these different cards (R/B, Grixis, U/B, U/R) should I increase the dragon count, and by how much? I would be looking to run 3-4 copies of each of the cards. In my R/G Dragons deck, I run 4x Draconic Roar and have 11 dragons in the deck. Working on a Grixis version running all 3, (4 scorn, 4 roar, 3 invocation...for now) which got me thinking of the question. Thanks for your insight, and logic behind your answer is always appreciated!
Jimmy_Chinchila says... #3
CanadianShinobi awesome thanks that makes perfect sense
June 22, 2015 3:23 a.m.
GeeksterPlays says... #4
In my Esper control (standard) I run 4 dragons;
1x Silumgar, the Drifting Death
With all of the Scry power from 10-12 temples, 4xDissolve and 4xDig Through Time it's not hard to find your way to having a Dragon in hand quite easily.
When the Theros block rotates and we lose things like Dissolve and Hero's Downfall I'll probably start running another couple of dragons to make sure Silumgar's Scorn is a hard counter most of the time (unless we get something better in the next block of course!)
June 22, 2015 8:05 a.m.
blackmarker90 says... #5
With Scry becoming an evergreen mechanic I foresee Dissolve becoming the new Cancel that we will see in almost every set.
June 22, 2015 9:18 a.m.
Jimmy_Chinchila says... #6
It's hard to not just jam a bunch of high CMC dragons without making the deck top heavy. Figure these 3 could buy a few turns to acquire mana
June 22, 2015 1:21 p.m.
Magic is a game of probabilities and that question can be answered through a hypergeometric calculation on this website : http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx
The ''minimum'' number of dragons your looking for is open to interpretation and is simply a percentage. The mathematical question is the following : What is the probability (in %) of drawing a dragon in my starting hand (7 cards) if I run x dragons in a deck consisting of x cards (most usually 60). Then you can start playing with numbers, since you're not planning on casting any dragon clause card by turn 2 on the play you can increase the number of cards drawn to 9. Here are the numbers for a turn 2 dragon on the play in a deck of 60 cards.
3 dragons : 39%
4 dragons : 49%
5 dragons : 57%
6 dragons : 64%
7 dragons : 70%
Some questions you can ask yourself to help you choose the good percentage are :
What happens if I don't draw a dragon, can I still play the game functionnally?
Do I have ways to manipulate my draws?
Do I have ways of drawing cards as soon as turn 1 or 2.
Do I need to make a percentage concession because playing too much dragons could hinder my deck and could crowd my hand?
Hope this helps! If you want me to explain how to use and interpret the website just let me know it's not that complicated!
June 22, 2015 3:15 p.m.
Jimmy_Chinchila says... #8
EssTea that's awesome man thanks, I'll have to use that formula for card probabilities in all my decks. Will mess around on site and get back to you if confused (been years since I took statistics)
CanadianShinobi says... #2
I think it depends on the deck. Control decks that use Silumgar's Scorn and Foul-Tongue Invocation are less reliant on the reveal effect. This is because early game your opponent can't always afford to pay
to counteract Silumgar's Scorn and late game you either have a dragon on hand or in play. Likewise with Foul-Tongue Invocation. The effect is quite powerful, the life gain is nice, but not necessary.
For grixis I would consider playing 6-8 dragons. Esper usually plays 5-6 and is arguably the best deck in Standard right now.
June 22, 2015 3:09 a.m.