There's also www.magic-league.com where you can play online for free, though the vintage scene there is a little small...

@SiegeX, The Acidic Hasidic:

I wasn't saying that we shouldn't use probabilities to determine outcome cause we don't have perfect systems.  I think "fair coin" and "totally random deck" are great ways to simplify and model the situation.  I just wanted to take the thread aside for a sec to say that in real life, we shouldn't be blind to the world.


It doesn't take hours, it takes 10 minutes max by calculator, even less if you use a tool like Excel or MWS's deck analysis suite.  And once you know 39.94% for a 4of in opening hand, that number doesn't change.

Knowing probability doesn't just help with deck construction, it also helps while you're playing.  Being able to ballpark certain calculations can help you immensly.  Knowing that the expected value of your next flipped card puts you down too close to 0 life tells you to kill dark confidant now rather than next turn.  Being able to ballpark how many more turns until you combo win tells you whether you have to deal with your opponent's creature threat or not.  Some people get these numbers by just playing their deck over and over till they know it.  The problem with just using previous games is that once you change a card or two, your earlier testing becomes slightly inaccurate.

Poker players and BJ players use probability to great success, magic players should as well.

Taking a side detour for a second:
If a coin flips up heads 10,000 times in a row, you better believe I'm going to not think the chance of flipping tails on the next flip is 50:50.  The 50:50 figure is based on the assupmtion of a fair coin.  The fair coin is like the "frictionless plane" in physics or the "0 resistance wire" in electronics.  It's decent for modeling, but does not exist in reality.  You can use statistics to find the likelyhood that the coin is fair, and in this case that likelyhood is very low (though still possible).

If a coin flips heads 10,000 times in a row, I begin to question the fairness of the coin and the fairness of the flip.  For me, the same applies to Magic.  If someone has their unlikely 7 card combo in the opening hand of every game I play vs them, I begin to question the legality of their deck and whether or not their shuffle leaves their deck random state or not (cheating or incompetance).

Thresholds are different for everyone though.  I might question a coin afterr 50 heads, whereas someone else might question it after 10 heads and someone else only after 10,000 (never).  In magic, someone might question 2-3 unlikely hands while someone else may never question.  I think both extremes are off the mark.

You can figure out most probabilities involving magic decks using the binomial coefficient (the choose function). 

Background
The choose function, "c" hereafter, is the number of ways to choose k elements from a set of n (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_coefficient).  For example, 4c1 is 4 because there are 4 ways to choose 1 element from 4.  4c2 is 6 because there are 6 ways to choose 2 elements from 4.  Mathematically, c = n!/(k!*(n-k)!). I use my TI-83's "nCr" function.

Finding exactly 1 of a card within the first 7 cards when it's a 4of in a deck of 60 cards.

eq a:  (4c1 * 56c6) / 60c7 = .336 = 33.6%

Expanded out: (4 * 56!/(6!*50!))*7!*53!/60! = (4 * 51*52*53*54*55*56*7*/(54*55*56*57*58*59*60) = 3935568 / 11703240
(Those factorials cancel out nicely.  But most people will just type eq a into a calculator).

The top part of the equation is your hand.  You want 1 card out of 4, and then 6 cards out of 56.  The bottom part represents all of the possible first hands: choosing 7 cards from 60.  This equation can be easily modified to find exactly 2 in first 7:

4c2 * 56c5 / 60c7 = 5.93 %

or exactly 3:

4c3 * 56c4 / 60c7 = .38 %

or exactly 4:
4c4 *56c3/60c7 = .007%

or even exactly 2 in the first 10:
4c2 * 56c6 / 60c10 = .26%

Finding AT LEAST 1 of a card within the first 7 cards when it's a 4of in a deck of 60 cards.
You can find this by adding up the prob of exactly getting 1, 2, 3, or 4:

33.6 + 5.93 + .38 + .007 = 39.917% (hmm... that seems a bit wrong)

or more accurately you can find the probability of not drawing the card and subtracting it from 1:

56c7/60c7 = 60.05%

1 - 60.05% = 39.95%  (ah, that's better)

Finding EXACTLY 1 of a card and EXACTLY 1 of ANOTHER card within the first 7 cards when they are both 4of in a deck of 60 cards.

4c1*4c1*52c5/60c7 = 10.76%

Finding EXACTLY 1 of a card and NONE of ANOTHER card within the first 7 cards when they are both 4of in a deck of 60 cards.

4c1*52c6/60c7 = 21.08%

There are many more crazy probabilities I can show, but as other people have said, brainstorm, ponder,etc make these calculations less useful then they can be on say a deck of playing cards.  Also, in practice, I use the deep deck analysis tools in MWS rather than punch in all of these calculations by hand.

~Laplie

I think more important is the fact that he's a one-sided helm of awakening.  One of the problems with helm is that your opponent's spells are also cheaper: forcing you to hold helm to the last possible moment to break the synergy.  You can drop this guy as early as you want and reap the benefits.

I'm assuming it will work the same way as regular storm: the amount of copies is determined when the triggered abilty resolves.

On another note, i don't see this card making much of a splash in vintage.  Jester's cap is usually better in Stax, and brain freeze usually does better in most sorts of infinite grave/spell decks

Or even Eureka for that matter

Psychic Vortex (drawing as a cumulative upkeep, there must be a way to abuse this)

Pygmy Hippo (You get mana AND your opponent must tap out during your attack phase.  Sadly, the only deck it might fight in (u/w fish) has no use for the extra mana)

Isochron Scepter (was all the hype really wrong?)

One With Nothing (the worst card ever must have some use)

well, after years of just reading the forums here, I joined just for this topic.

In my build, I still have in the careful studies so reanimate does power out a turn 2 win without moxes.  The optimal hand would be:

land, careful study, golem, reanimate, corpse dance, (cunning wish OR brain freeze OR intuition)

with only the land, study, and golem needing to be in your turn 1 hand and any of the rest can be drawn off study or the turn2 draw.  A mox would give you a turn 1 win.

Using my trusty odds calculator (and not considering needing the land because of complications), the odds of such a hand is about 9% going first and 12% going second.

Reanimate gives you 4 extra mana for the cost of 6 life.  It is not situational, since in order to win you would have to have golem in the grave at some point anyway.