Uhhh... you completely neglected the fact that I pointed that fact out....
a 3/3 and a 2/3. not a list I'd play now (b/c of vulnerability to Null and no way to deal with Tezz main), but just refuting your statement that a 3/3 for 1 would not be playable.
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All you've done so far is criticize someone's list in a meta that had 30% Tezz. And that list won that tournament, a fact you just sort of nonchalantly dismiss. Which, if you want to say you don't think it's the best deck, that's fine. But you need more than just some vague assumption that he lucked into victory.
I quoted his match-ups specifically. I'm not "assuming" that he lucked into victory, I'm showing that a creature-dense deck with larger butts than are typically played beat two fish decks. There's no luck there: the matchups favored a strategy that's suboptimal elsewhere. That doesn't make Kird Ape playable, anymore than it would make Boggart Ram Gang playable if he'd won with it. I tied a long string of tournaments in the St. Louis area with a Sins of the Past in my Doomsday sideboard, and I assure you that the card is neither optimal NOR playable.
Are we suddenly presuming that the other 52 cards in the decks are mana sources?
No, only that they aren't pitch counters or other 'free' spells. When the theorized beatdown deck taps out, it stops interacting through anything but its creatures.
Your assessment of a "relevant clock test" isn't really a good one.
Please suggest a better one.
Why is 4 turns too slow? You give no reason. You just say "it's too slow if you don't interact." Well, then 'Goyf is too slow, right? Certainly, he isn't playable in your eyes.... And basically every aggro creature is too slow. What creature kills in 4 turns and is played on turn 1? Even turn 1 Tinker -> Inkwell Leviathan is too slow. And if you don't first turn Tinker -> DSC or Oath -> 2x Hellkite Overlord (or whatever), those are too slow too. None of these options interact with the opponent at all.
Neither Oath nor Tinker lock you into a line of play where you have to drop them early for them to have a significant impact on the game. If Tinker or Oath were errata-ed so they could not resolve after turn 2, yes, they'd be "too slow." Dozer once did an experiment where he built
infiTinker.dec, a thought experiment that successfulled showed that narrowly trying to Tinker for DSC as fast as possible (in a slower meta) was not a great strategy.
4 turns is too slow when your tempo is spent building the clock without interacting significantly with your opponent. The reason is simple, most other decks can lock you down or kill you before turn 4 when they're goldfishing.
Plus you give no reasoning behind why between the 3/3 on 1 and the sliding scale 2, it's the 1 that is the bad card and not the 2. It's not like that 'Goyf is going to go in for 20 faster than turn 4 or 5. Of course, a turn 1 3/3 backed by a turn 2 3/3 wins in 5 turns the SAME as if you played 'Goyf turn 2 and turn 3, but for half the mana and with half of it coming down before drain mana is up.
Goyf is fat on turn 4 regardless of whether I played him on turn 4 or turn 1. The Hidden creatures and Adder are unlikely to get fat that late in the game unless they won't matter to my opponent.
