Can someone help me understand how {Evolving Wilds} is useful? I've thought about it a lot and just don't see it.
When dual lands are not plentiful it will allow you to do some mana fixing.
Additionally, it helps thin a deck, or add another card/land/permanent to a graveyard, or it will allow landfall triggers to take place twice in the turn, which can be tricky or rely on another card to help out.
{Evolving Wilds},like {Terramorphic Expanse} is a great land searcher and can instantly give you equal mana advantage in the mid-game and such
I play 24 lands on average. Would you count 4 wilds among the 24?
Quote from: Bookmeister on March 05, 2013, 03:43:48 AM
I play 24 lands on average. Would you count 4 wilds among the 24?
Yes :)
I like to use it to reshuffle after an {augur of bolas} if I have to put something useful on the bottom of my library.
{Hedron Crab}!!
It all smooths out your mana curve. The deck thinning aspect is overstated however, it lets you shuffle - which is generally a favorable thing.
It's like a slightly slower {ponder} if youre playing outside of Legacy. Because ponder is banned in modern. Which is stupid.
Everything leads back to modern's banned list. It's a vicious circle!!!
Modern's banned list is the Kevin Bacon of Magic.
Very useful land for creature mechanics like {knight of the reliquary} and {deathrite shaman}
Quote from: Dudecore on March 05, 2013, 11:34:41 AM
It all smooths out your mana curve. The deck thinning aspect is overstated however, it lets you shuffle - which is generally a favorable thing.
It can thin quite well with things like {Sun Titan} or {Faith's Reward} or in an eggs deck.
The shuffle thing is as said is quite beneficial.
The best thinning you can really get with sac lads are in decks like the old Rdw that ran about 18 lands and only needed 3 lands on the field the whole game to play.
The deck thinning is overblown. You don't see any of those gains until turn 13 or later. It's been proven mathematically that it just doesn't significantly thin your deck (here (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/print.asp?ID=3096))
We can argue all day about it, but that isn't the point, they're good for other reasons too.
And I took statistics for economics in college and I know you can make statistics say almost anything you want. The fact is, with one less land card in your library, the statistical probability of drawing a land is reduced, however slightly, therefore increasing the statistical probability of drawing a non-land. The life loss mechanic to search for a land can be argued that it isn't worth the price you pay and I agree, however in EDH, that value is effectively cut in half by the fact that you start at double life.
I'm not trying to argue with you, however, I have to laugh at anyone who says they don't thin your deck because they are dead wrong. The "value" of doing so changes from deck to deck based on how that mechanic may synergize with other cards in those decks. Like most things in MtG, (which is one of many reasons I love this game) it really comes down to preference.
Including 4-8 cards that "fetch" you another card also requires you to draw those cards. If you're first 8 cards are those cards...then you've thinned 16 cards out of your deck total using that method. That is 8 turns in a row with a land drop. That is good for helping you win the game.
The point is, yeah it thins cards out, but at what cost? It's statistically improbable that it would ever even help in a timely manner, even if the scenario I described above occurred
It is not a grand conspiracy to hate on people who think it thins the deck - it quite literally does remove 2 cards. But you do not get the desired effect you expect, because it is hardly a statically relevant fact.
Aha! And therein lies the issue. All facts in statistics are relevant. If I have 10 cards in a pile and 2 of them are spades, the statistical probability of a randomly selected card being a spade would be 1 in 5. Remove a spade from the pile and its 1 in 9. A significant improvement statistically, but in the grand scheme of things, all but irrelevant. Rolling a six sided die, and getting a 3 is, of course, 1 in 6, however if there's is no 3 side (theoretically speaking) 1 in 6 becomes 0 probability.
Now. All that being said the possibility exists that after activating the evolving wilds, searching and playing a tapped basic land, and then shuffling your library, your library might have ALL your remaing land cards on the top.
Not very likely, but a statistical probability nonetheless, essentially doing the exact opposite of what you were hoping evolving wilds would help work towards.
Just because something is probable, does not mean it will happen. But by increasing the probability of occurrence, you increase the frequency with which you have the desired result over any number of games, which is what we, as deck builders, are gunning for. Magic, after all is a game of probability. Math is definately a massive factor, but no more so that luck.
As my favorite smuggler would say,
"Never tell me the odds!"
Agreed.
Why I prefer the panorama fetch lands. At least they enter untapped and add mana, which is the downfall of {evolving wilds}/{teramorphic expanse} as they do not. Slightly narrower search parameters but no less effective.
See {esper panorama}