[Discussion]Dr. Doom

[Kasuras]

Dr. Doom, by Nathan “Kasuras� Meijer

Just over a year ago, Doomsday was no longer on the infamous restricted list. Just over a year ago, team Meandeck wrote 3 articles on a deck featuring the card and just over a year ago, Stephen Menendian got 4th at SCG II. More than a year now, we have heard nothing of the deck anymore.

Why not? Was it because the deck is so hard to play? Or because people were just not interested in it? I can’t say for certain, but what I can say is that it is not because of lack of potential in the deck.

Their enigmatic idea was the following stack:

(top of library)
Ancestral Recall
Black Lotus
Dark Ritual
Mind’s Desire
Beacon of Destruction
(bottom of library)

This one was so good because it only required UB and could go off in 1 turn. Also not unimportant: it only needs to add 1 clumsy card that does nothing by itself. The final major factor was that this kill was limited to 2 colors, so you didn’t have to splash another color just for the kill, this makes your manabase a lot stronger.


In Stephen’s articles, he mostly talks about the history of the deck, a short explanation on the card choices and an analysis of the various possible stacks in various situations. He doesn’t go in depth about the specific card choices however. Neither was there an explanation on the sideboard. Finally: it has been quite long since the deck was played, so for the sake of discussion I’ll summarize his points a bit.

Decklist

4 Doomsday
3 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Chromatic Sphere
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Timetwister
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Lim-Dûl’s Vault
1 Gush
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mind's Desire
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Force of Will 
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Unmask
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Beacon of Destruction

The Mainboard

Even after this year, most of the mainboard is still set in stone. I’ll analyse the various compartments one by one:

Kill (20 cards)
1 Beacon of Destruction
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Gush
1 Timetwister
1 Chromatic Sphere
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind's Desire
1 Black Lotus
2 Dark Ritual
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
4 Doomsday

As mentioned by Stephen in his article, these are just the cards which are necessary in building the various stacks to win through the various situations that might occur.

The reason why I choose Hurkyl’s Recall over Rebuild is that a Chalice set at hurts you more than a Chalice set at 2. There are 7 cards with a casting cost of 3, of which 7 are essential in you winning the game: you really don’t stand that much of a chance if you can’t play Doomsday, Necropotence or Yawgmoth’s Will. Compare this to the 4 cards with a casting cost of 2 in your deck, of which none of them is essential in winning and you will probably see why I prefer Hurkyl’s Recall over Rebuild. Moreover; mana sources are scarce in the deck, and you really don’t want to simply waste mana by paying extra for unnecessary stuff. Especially considering that the added effect of Rebuild, bouncing your artifacts as well, is not as useful in this deck: there are no Mana Crypts or Vaults to bounce to generate extra mana.

The advantage of Rebuild is that it can cycle into a win, but I’ve never been in a situation where I would rather have a Rebuild than a Hurkyl’s Recall: if you have blue mana left, Brainstorm is just better than the cycling effect Rebuild offers and if you only have black mana: you’re probably going for Necropotence into Yawgmoth’s Will and Tendrils of Agony anyways.

Disruption base (12 cards)
4 Duress
4 Unmask
4 Force of Will

It is obvious why you want at least some disruption: the scenario that Doomsday plans when trying to win is very fragile. Duress and Unmask function as a way to clear the path so your stuff doesn’t get countered, and Force of Will functions more as a way to make sure that things that hurt you don’t resolve.

Tutors, brokenness and other draw(6 cards)
1 Necropotence
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Brainstorm

I guess this is all pretty obvious: Necropotence’s errata says “you win the game next turn� and the tutors search for necessary combo parts.

Manabase(20 cards)
3 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
2 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual

Due to the fact that you will quite often not win right away, but rather set up a win next turn with Doomsday: the manabase is as less as possible vulnerable to Wastelands. The worst thing that can happen is someone Wastelanding your Underground Sea so you don’t have sufficient mana for the win next turn. This explains why you run both a Swamp and Islands.

Recently, Hero ‘t Mannetje got 2nd at the November Eindhoven tournament running an extra Chromatic Sphere over an Island. I do think that this is a solid addition, but I won’t make that change in my list. Let me explain: the optimal hand has 2 permanent mana sources; the chance of drawing that when playing 17 lands is 0,338972 and when playing with 16 is 0,337438. That is 1,004545 % higher, which can be neglected. Also: take a look at a few other chances:

-Drawing at least 1 land: 0,916563 (17), 0,900777 (16) = 1,017524 %
-Drawing at least 2 lands: 0,731647 (17), 0,707554 (16) = 1,034052 %
-Drawing 2 lands of which 1 a fetch in your opening grip, and drawing another land in the next 3: 0,150111 (17), 0,146061 (16) = 1,027727 %

As you can see, these differences all barely surpass the 1% mark and can therefore statistically be neglected. However: the deck is already quite light on mana and needs at least 2 and often even 3 or 4 mana to get out of uncomforting situations or win. I assume that this decision was based on a metagame prediction of a lot of control and a low number of prison decks, since Chromatic Sphere is a good choice when you know that your mana sources are not going to be heavily disrupted but when you need to win faster.

The final notable thing would be the lack of jewellery. The reason for this is because of the apparent increase in Null Rods and Gorilla Shamans again. Besides, what will a Mox Emerald cast for you? Definitely not a Doomsday or Dark Ritual, which are both essential parts of the strategy. The goal is to be resilient to hate, adding cards with a big “HIT ME� sign on me do not fall under my definition of resiliency. Moreover, adding jewellery won’t really increase chances of winning with Doomsday because, as said, they don’t cast the required spells for that way of winning.

Other
1 Time Walk
1 Lim-Dûl’s Vault

These 2 cards are, in my opinion, the only debateable choices, with the reason for decision on these 2 slots being the expected metagame, budget and personal taste. Time Walk should be the first card to cut if you are going to play in a 5-proxy event; the other 5 power cards are far more important than Time Walk.

Other Colors

Since Fifth Dawn was released together with the menacing Crucible of Worlds: people started to really think about their manabases and instead of putting in as many colors as possible were now trying to minimize the played colors. Recently, this trend went downwards again due to the control decks now being able to win very fast.

Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that you should splash even Pink into your deck. What follows is a list of the various compartments of the deck and what another color could do for the deck there:

-Kill: you already have the, as far as I know, the least expensive way of killing that is possible. You also already have an answer to everything in that kill mechanism, so why would you want a better kill? To kill with more style? Style won’t be remembered in a match, winning it will.

-Disruption: I don’t think that you’ll need any other disruption than those that black, blue and artifacts can offer. The most important way of disrupting the opponent is making sure their threats don’t resolve, nullifying them for at least a turn so you can win or they can’t and, most importantly; seeing what your opponent has in hand. Moreover, Xantid Swarm (often seen as the best way of disrupting sufficiently in combo decks) is not very useful in this deck for 2 simple reasons: this deck often requires an extra turn to win, so that’s at least 3 turns required to win and there already is another version of the card in the form of Defense Grid which does the same job really.

-Manabase: you can only make your manabase worse with adding another color in the deck: it’s not as if you’re going to add Birds of Paradise in this deck.

-Drawing / Tutor power: blue and black are the best drawing and tutoring colors in the game, why add a secondary when that’s unnecessary? Draw7s in the form of Wheel of Fortune are not appropriate in this deck because you don’t want your opponent to draw extra cards as well, again due to the vulnerability of the kill mechanism.

Because I think that no other color can add any consistency to the deck; I don’t feel that you should add another color. I might however have missed a card which would make splashing very much worth debating.

Why play this deck?

The most important reason why you would want to play this deck would be because of it being able to punch through whatever your opponent is throwing at you. No hate card should theoretically be a problem for you, and every situation can be solved with this deck. A second important reason lies in the fact that nobody has seen this deck for a year, so nobody knows how to play properly against it, let alone them having any sideboard cards specifically for it.

Take a look at GrimLong for example: what can that deck do against a resolved Platinum Angel with backup or a True Believer at all? Nothing. Both cards are increasingly seeing play however: Oath and Slaver both play Angel sideboard and I haven’t seen a fish deck lately that doesn’t run True Believer. Compare this to Doomsday, which does have an answer to these cards.

Playing the deck

General

This deck is very hard to play. It has been said before, but let me just say it again: this deck is very hard to play. The most important reason for this is that the deck is so unforgiving: every resource is important, and making a miscount of even 1 mana will really lose you the game. Too often have I started with an early Yawgmoth’s Will only to find out that I needed 1 more generic mana to cast those damned Tendrils of Agony, the annoying part is that I could have seen this when I cast the Yawgmoth’s Will. Too often have I paid too much life with Necropotence to find out that I needed 1 more mana and was at 1 life with my only land being a Polluted Delta.

Another major factor that plays a role in the deck being so unforgiving is the huge amount of card-disadvantage you are playing: Force of Will, Unmask and the deck being so dependant on its rituals and tutors; getting the Yawgmoth’s Will you searched and paid for with a Demonic Tutor and 2 Dark Rituals countered with a Mana Drain for example gives you an astounding card disadvantage of 3 cards!

The final factor in the deck being so hard to play is that the deck relies a lot on the stack you eventually make: if that stack is wrong or the wrong one, you have lost the game, simple as that. As Stephen put it in his article:

“The biggest difficulty with this deck is that the game compresses into one big play. If you are on turn 1 and go, land, Brainstorm, and your hand has both Dark Ritual and Doomsday, then you have to figure out right now what you are going to Doomsday for next turn, because it will affect which cards you are going to put back with Brainstorm. This is the most stressful part of the deck. This is complicated by the fact that you only get the standard combo about 40% of the time. You shouldn't view Doomsday as having a single combo because of this fact: You will want to get different cards for different situations.�

Mulligans

When playing against an unknown deck, the best hands have sufficient mana, a way of winning fast and, perhaps most important; a Duress or Unmask. If you are playing Doomsday without knowledge on what your opponent has in hand at all, you shouldn’t be too surprised if he counters your relevant spells or plays something annoying like a Root Maze or Pyrostatic Pillar in his turn.

For this reason: it is very hard to get a turn 1 kill with the deck. Of course: it’s very much possible to get 2 Rituals, a Swamp, Chromatic Sphere and a Doomsday in your hand. But that won’t do you any good if your opponent counters any of the required things to make that combo happen. So, your kill will often be delayed to a minimal of turn 3: the first turn to look at your opponent’s hand and grab anything of importance, the second to set up the win and the third to actually win the game.

Matchups

Because of this deck potentially having an answer to everything, I feel that the question whether you will win against a specific deck or not lies not in the deck itself but whether you can pull of a win in a certain situation. This is probably best illustrated by a simple example when facing a deck like stax: your opponent has more pesky artifacts in play than you run artifacts at all, including a Trinisphere. Now, whether you win or not now relies on whether you are able to get rid of that Trinisphere and can win next turn. Therefore I think that the success you will have with this deck depends a lot on skill and luck instead of the major factor being what deck your opponent plays.

Another example: you’re facing an Oath deck, and he mulligans twice to that feared opening of the turn 1 Oath + Orchard. He now has 2 cards left though, so the chance of him having a counter at this time is not that great. Will you win? That depends on what he will draw and whether you are able to pull off the win fast enough, but it is a similar situation to goldfishing with losing 6 life the first turn and 12 the second.

Sideboard

General

I don’t think that the sideboard plays a very important role in this deck. You can already win through every situation; it’s just a matter of whether you’re able to do that in time. However, there just are certain cards that make certain matchups easier so you have more chance to kill him in time.

Transformational sideboard

The purpose of a transformational sideboard is mostly to catch the opponent off-guard: he expects the Doomsday plan, but you’re now playing Oath instead for instance. Another reason to construct such a sideboard is because of the “sideboard deck� having a stronger matchup against decks that your “mainboard deck� has a weaker matchup against. A great example of this would be fish having an Oath sideboard: fish generally beats control, and Oath generally beats aggro as where fish is weaker against aggro-decks.

I don’t think that the latter reason applies to Doomsday however; you don’t have real bad matchups since you can play through everything. I think the sideboard is better served with certain hate cards that make some hard matchups easier instead of devoting your entire sideboard to a certain matchup while neglecting other tough matchups.

Regular sideboard

As played by Stephen Menendian: (3rd place, 2004-11-06 Star City P9 III Chicago)

3 Back to Basics
3 Energy Flux
3 Old Man of the Sea
2 Null Rod
3 Defense Grid
1 Chain of Vapor

As played by Hero ‘t Mannetje: (2nd place, 2005-11-27, Eindhoven November 2005)

4 Energy Flux
3 Defense Grid
3 Phyrexian Furnace
2 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Echoing Truth

I must confess that I don’t have that much experience with a specific sideboard for this deck, so I’ll leave the analysis of that to the discussion.

Conclusion

My goal is to get the deck discussed in general, and specifically the sideboard and best approach to take with the deck: Rebuild and Chromatic Sphere for more stability when going off, or Hurkyl’s Recall and an Island for more stability before going off.

Resources

For the article, I have used the following articles. References in the article are also directed to these articles. I recommend reading these as well, they offer great insight in the deck’s history and the way you should play it and construct various stacks.

I am very sorry that these are the only resources possible and of relevance: but that’s because of the deck not being played.

Rehearsing the Doomsday Scenario: Learning How to Build Optimal Doomsday Piles by Stephen Menendian: (article)
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/9361.html
The Doomsday Device: The Coolest Win Condition In Magic by Stephen Menendian: (primer/article)
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/8410.html
Papal Bull: Doomsday’s Back—and in Non-hoax Form! By JP Meyer: (primer/article)
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/8372.html

Hero ’t Mannetje’s deck played to a 2nd place finish in the November Eindhoven tournament:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=25714.0

[WildWillieWonderboy]

You mention the inherent fragility of the Doomsday win, as well as how the deck compresses into one turn. Isn't this enough reason not to play it? A LOT of stacks lose to double force, and a lot of stacks lose to Ancestral Recall. Doomsday frequently gives you hands that simply give you no other option than to play dday and stack it the best way you can. If your opponent has card X, you lose.

Let's compare this with Gifts decks. You pay one more mana for one less card. That's not so great. But lo, those are generic mana. That means you can play mana drain. Which means you can play offcolor moxen, which means you don't have to play rituals. No more card disadvantage. Every Gifts stack is functionally a Doomsday stack; Gifts for Tinker, Recoup, Yawg Will, Lotus = Dday for Ancestral, Lotus, Dark Ritual, Desire, Beacon. The key difference is that if you can't win yet, Gifts won't make you lose. Instead, you can go for other goodies that will give you mana and card advantage and you'll win some other time. The fact that the Gifts stack is not the end of the game gives you more options.

It seems that the real matchup in Dday is you vs. your own deck, which fails to acknowledge that there is an opponent present and that Misdirection and FoW are available on turn 0, that Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm, Chalice, Sphere, even Trinisphere, Monkey and Duress all come online next turn and then Drains and all sorts of ridiculousness. Not playing against your opponent's deck means playing pure percentage, which forfeits the right to outplay your opponent.

The good combo decks have some inevitability. Provided they can continually make forward progress, decks like Dragon and Long will eventually win. The same can be said for Gifts, which is essentially Combo-Control if we want to stick to old school archetype names.

[Kasuras]

The problem is that you are trying to see this as a pure combo deck just like GrimLong, DeathLong and Belcher: all those decks are trying to win as fast as possible. But let me just quote myself here:

For this reason: it is very hard to get a turn 1 kill with the deck. Of course: it’s very much possible to get 2 Rituals, a Swamp, Chromatic Sphere and a Doomsday in your hand. But that won’t do you any good if your opponent counters any of the required things to make that combo happen. So, your kill will often be delayed to a minimal of turn 3: the first turn to look at your opponent’s hand and grab anything of importance, the second to set up the win and the third to actually win the game.

Really, you are not going to cast Doomsday if you don't know what it's in your opponent's hand. You say that there is the "OOPS i HAVE 2 F0W YOU LOSE LOL" factor, I disagree. If the opponent has 2 Force of Will: what the hell are you casting Doomsday?


Comparing this to Gifts is folly for the simple reason that Gifts does not have exactly the same matchups but better. I've seen this statement quite often now, and to be honest: I am very annoyed by it. The sole reason why you play deck X over deck Y is because of its different matchups: this can mean that even suicide is a better choice than gifts at a certain expected metagame. Both decks have very different game plans, so let's not compare this to gifts but instead focus on the deck itself, this is just like posting in a CS thread why you would want to play that over Gifts.

It seems that the real matchup in Dday is you vs. your own deck, which fails to acknowledge that there is an opponent present and that Misdirection and FoW are available on turn 0, that Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm, Chalice, Sphere, even Trinisphere, Monkey and Duress all come online next turn and then Drains and all sorts of ridiculousness. Not playing against your opponent's deck means playing pure percentage, which forfeits the right to outplay your opponent.

You seem to understand the deck entirely wrong: this deck is possibly the most interactive at the moment. How you stack Doomsday, when to disrupt, with what to disrupt, when to play DD: all dependant on your opponent! And as said: you are not trying to win with Doomsday if you are not very sure that your chances of winning are high enough.

Finally, you seem to forget that this deck can also go with the Tendrils kill. Moreover, the sideboard hasn't been filled, which means that you can still fill it up with a "transformational"-Horden Tendrils or GrimLong way of killing.

[WildWillieWonderboy]

Comparing this to Gifts is folly for the simple reason that Gifts does not have exactly the same matchups but better. I've seen this statement quite often now, and to be honest: I am very annoyed by it. The sole reason why you play deck X over deck Y is because of its different matchups: this can mean that even suicide is a better choice than gifts at a certain expected metagame. Both decks have very different game plans, so let's not compare this to gifts but instead focus on the deck itself, this is just like posting in a CS thread why you would want to play that over Gifts.

The only means of evaluating a deck is in comparison with other decks; that's why I cited other storm combo decks and Gifts, as they are the closest parallels I know of.

Really, you are not going to cast Doomsday if you don't know what it's in your opponent's hand. You say that there is the "OOPS i HAVE 2 F0W YOU LOSE LOL" factor, I disagree. If the opponent has 2 Force of Will: what the hell are you casting Doomsday?

I understand that casting Doomsday against an unknown hand is a bad play. In fact, that's the central point of my argument. If you get the hand that's 2 Rituals, a Swamp, Chromatic Sphere and a Doomsday, you have a bad hand that requires you to make said terrible play. Even if this hand happens to include Duress, Unmask or FoW, it's still terrible because it loses to double FoW and Ancestral Recall. There is no way to play this hand that does not lose against a decent hand. If you wait, your hand deteriorates relative to your opponent's because their good spells come online and lock parts start to come down.

You seem to understand the deck entirely wrong: this deck is possibly the most interactive at the moment. How you stack Doomsday, when to disrupt, with what to disrupt, when to play DD: all dependant on your opponent! And as said: you are not trying to win with Doomsday if you are not very sure that your chances of winning are high enough.

My point is that this degree of interaction still comes down to blind guessing and that your opponent doesn't have any arbitrary deadline. Duressing or Unmasking a player and then passing is terrible because our format has Brainstorm+Fetch. Congratulations, you now have no idea what's in that hand. The planning with this deck can only involve a few turns, and that's the real problem. There is no plan that works after a certain turn because too many answers will have been found on the other side of the table. I understand that the idea is to put as little of the planning into the Dday as possible, because putting in utility cards that only work in Dday is terrible because of the fragility that we have discussed.

LDVault looks good, in fact I'd advocate more of them because this deck has a tendency to draw things that don't help the hand it has. Also, if just attacking your opponents hand and playing Dday turn one isn't an option, why play Unmask? You mentioned that it does terrible things to your hand and puts a shorter clock on you to go off, so it seems like it's terrible if you see a hand that you don't beat.

EDIT: Props on working with such a challenging deck. Slops to me for not saying that earlier and for posting on Xmas day.

[Liam-K]

On the flip side of that arguement, example hand of ritual, ritual, swamp, chromatic sphere, doomsday says "win this turn unless your opponent has force of will + blue card."  According to the averages this hand usually wins even against decks with 4 force.

To me this deck feels like it desperately wants to be grimlong but instead requires passing turns.  4 force 4 unmask is not a lot to gain when you're (usually) giving up a turn AND choking yourself at BBB.  The deck can't afford to sit around all day waiting and pretending to be TPS, and it isn't as fast as our other options.

edit: thinking about it, TPS is probably the best comparison, and it is also up for debate right now.

[Kasuras]

EDIT: Props on working with such a challenging deck.

Thanks, it is indeed quite a challenging deck both in building it and playing it.

I understand that casting Doomsday against an unknown hand is a bad play. In fact, that's the central point of my argument. If you get the hand that's 2 Rituals, a Swamp, Chromatic Sphere and a Doomsday, you have a bad hand that requires you to make said terrible play. Even if this hand happens to include Duress, Unmask or FoW, it's still terrible because it loses to double FoW and Ancestral Recall. There is no way to play this hand that does not lose against a decent hand. If you wait, your hand deteriorates relative to your opponent's because their good spells come online and lock parts start to come down.

It has already been mentioned by Liam-K:

On the flip side of that arguement, example hand of ritual, ritual, swamp, chromatic sphere, doomsday says "win this turn unless your opponent has force of will + blue card."  According to the averages this hand usually wins even against decks with 4 force.

But let me evaluate that further. I do not have access to SCG premium, so I cannot give any numbers on the chance of facing a deck that runs 4 Force of Will. However, I'll just give a made up number here: 40% of the played decks run 4x Force of Will. However, quite a lot of those decks also want to win as fast possible, just like you: so a hand without a Force of Will but with a turn 1 DSC is definitely a "KP", since they don't know what to expect either. Would I be wrong to say here that then you can expect a Force of Will in 8% to 12% of the situations? That isn't too great in my opinion, and definitely a risk I would be willing to take.

My point is that this degree of interaction still comes down to blind guessing and that your opponent doesn't have any arbitrary deadline. Duressing or Unmasking a player and then passing is terrible because our format has Brainstorm+Fetch. Congratulations, you now have no idea what's in that hand. The planning with this deck can only involve a few turns, and that's the real problem. There is no plan that works after a certain turn because too many answers will have been found on the other side of the table. I understand that the idea is to put as little of the planning into the Dday as possible, because putting in utility cards that only work in Dday is terrible because of the fragility that we have discussed.

Yes, I have toyed around for a while with a faster version of the deck in change of the disruption base. It became clear however that you really need this disruption base if you want to stick to Doomsday, you'd better change to GrimLong otherwise.

LDVault looks good, in fact I'd advocate more of them because this deck has a tendency to draw things that don't help the hand it has. Also, if just attacking your opponents hand and playing Dday turn one isn't an option, why play Unmask? You mentioned that it does terrible things to your hand and puts a shorter clock on you to go off, so it seems like it's terrible if you see a hand that you don't beat.

I agree there, Vault is very strong and Unmask is not that strong. But what to replace them with? Seeing the opponent's hand is rather important, and I have no idea what to remove for a second Vault.

To me this deck feels like it desperately wants to be grimlong but instead requires passing turns.  4 force 4 unmask is not a lot to gain when you're (usually) giving up a turn AND choking yourself at BBB.  The deck can't afford to sit around all day waiting and pretending to be TPS, and it isn't as fast as our other options.

edit: thinking about it, TPS is probably the best comparison, and it is also up for debate right now.

I agree that it looks like TPS a bit, but your reasoning before that statement applies to GrimLong; so I can't really respond to it.

[Liam-K]

For clarity (as stated in the TPS thread) I feel that TPS is an inferior choice because it is a comparatively weak combo deck and a comparatively weak control deck, and is therefor comparatively bad at whatever role it chooses to assume.  As a caveat I wish to state I am aware that TPS is not so terrible that it is impossible to win a tournament with it.

Drawing a force in your opening hand is a 40% chance, getting a blue card with it is slightly but negligably less in most decks with 4 fow.  Players who are not retarded and know you are playing some form of combo will probably mull for force, increasing that chance somewhat, but depending on the metagame not every deck will be packing forces.  The likelyhood of getting hosed by force with that hand is pretty impossible to calculate, but 50/50 in a meta with a lot of drain and fish is probably not bad.  Of course, seeing that hand on the draw against stax is also bad news as a 2sphere, chalice 1 (if they know you're playing combo), or 3sphere all buy them forever and a day to finish locking you down, so even in a stax heavy meta it won't budge far from 50/50 IMO.  Again, assuming opponents who are not retarded.

[Kasuras]

No, I actually think that this deck is easier to compare to Dragon for the sake of discussion:

-Both decks suffer from splash damage: hate cards not directly geared towards that deck still work against it.
-Both decks can technically play through everything that your opponent throws at you.
-Both decks are very fragile: a gone-wrong Doomsday will lose you the game, and so will (probably) losing all your permanents to a timed StP at your dragon.

Which rises the important question: why play Doomsday over Dragon? I am uncertain about a good answer on this, but I do think that a major factor in this decision would be the metagame you expect: both decks suffer from different types of disruption. Another thing would be that Doomsday can go 2 ways, Doomsday and regular Tendrils as where Dragon always has to do the same thing, and therefore suffers from the same hate all the time.

At the moment; Dragon is a deck that exists for a few years now, and a lot of testing has been done to it and a lot of different versions and sideboards can be found. This, alas, doesn't hold up for Doomsday: and I hope to improve Doomsday's situation with more ideas on how to main-and-sideboard for different metagames. This deck has great potential, look at the high finishes this deck has put up, and I do think the deck deserves this kind of discussion.

Again, assuming opponents who are not retarded.

Also assuming opponents who know what you are playing, and then you often also know what they are playing as well.

[Liam-K]

How much does knowing the guy across from you is playing drains when you see the aforementioned hand of swamp, ritual, ritual, sphere, doomsday?  Your chances of walking into force can only go up, and if you're desperately hoping to draw duress, you give your opponent 2 turns to bring drain online.  There is only one play with that hand, and it is go balls out and hope.

[bebe]

I would compare the deck to Belcher as well. It suffers from the same conditions and it has a much more difficult time recovering when things go wrong - fow on land grant, null rods, needles, etc. Belcher is easier to pull off as well or at least i've found it so as I've played both decks at large venues. I would need some convincing that Dragon or Belcher are not better choices. If indeed i do want to go balls out I would prefer either of these decks over Doomsday. I just find it to be too fragile and inconsistent. Maybe I just never had any luck with it.