[Single Card Discussion] Street Wraith

[Meddling Mike]

Street Wraith  3BB
Creature-Wraith
Swampwalk
Cycling-Pay 2 life. (Pay 2 life, Discard this card: Draw a card.)
3/4

OK, so, people have had some time to work with this card and the only thing I've noticed is that people cannot seem to agree on anything regarding this card. Opinions seem to run from thinking it belongs in just about every deck to believing it doesn't belong in anything.

My own perception of the card is that it should be in every deck in which the life total is only a minor concern. This primarily includes pure "all or nothing" combo decks. In these types of decks the manaless deck thinning would be crucial and allow the deck to more reliably execute it's gameplan and cut four additional cards making the remaining 56 more concentrated towards the deck's goals. The other situation is when the cycling fills an additional function. For example, in a deck with Tamorgoyf, Psychatog or threshold cards cycling him provides a greater effect than merely thinning the deck. It seems to be tailor-made for Ichorid where being able to bazaar and dredge on your opening turn could drastically speed up the deck's clock or allow for plays like hitting a narcomeoba and being able to cast cabal therapy turn 1.

One of the cons of this card is that it can make mulligan decisions more difficult. Without knowing what the Street Wraith will turn up it can be more difficult to decide.

I'm curious about other people's thoughts and experiences with this card.

[MaxxMatt]

I'm sorry about Italian language of the link, but the summary is: "I too think about SW being inserted anywhere but Oath or Freeze.dec".

This is the link for the lists I assembled as "tests" for non-credent about the SW-Maniacal-Era

LINKED LISTS ON OUR SITE

[Scyther]

 I think SW is just awfull in Fastbond based decks, especially Grow. Arguments are obvious imo...
It perfectly fits in Ichorid and maybe Long-Variants, but in most other decks I see definetly way better options for cheap card drawing.

[diopter]

I think SW is just awfull in Fastbond based decks, especially Grow. Arguments are obvious imo...
It perfectly fits in Ichorid and maybe Long-Variants, but in most other decks I see definetly way better options for cheap card drawing.

Except that the arguments are not obvious at all. Street Wraith isn't card-drawing - it's a way to run less cards in your deck, increasing the odds of pulling any one card off the top. Since Fastbond decks really like their singletons (like, Fastbond), Street Wraith is actually really good.

[pyr0ma5ta]

I think SW is just awfull in Fastbond based decks, especially Grow. Arguments are obvious imo...
It perfectly fits in Ichorid and maybe Long-Variants, but in most other decks I see definetly way better options for cheap card drawing.

Except that the arguments are not obvious at all. Street Wraith isn't card-drawing - it's a way to run less cards in your deck, increasing the odds of pulling any one card off the top. Since Fastbond decks really like their singletons (like, Fastbond), Street Wraith is actually really good.

Not to mention the GAT game plan involves digging to Duress, Fow, and Misd as often as possible.  I'd argue that SW is at its best in Ichorid and only slightly worse in GAT.

[seer]

My main problem with Street Wraith is that I feel it decreases the power of Brainstorm. While at first this may seem to be the opposite because with virtually less cards in your deck, (the effect street wraith provides), in theory, Brainstorm would become even more powerful. However, what ends up happening is that brainstorms hit street wraiths. And if we are without a reshuffle effect we don't have a chance to cycle Street Wraith into a new card. Thus, I have sort of grown to dislike Street Wraith in Brainstorm based decks.

[Sarah Angel]

I'm undecided on whether to use it in the deck I run (Flash/Rector).

On one hand, it makes this already lightning fast deck that much faster, but, life is very important in this deck (for using bargain) and I already take some hits from fetchlands.

It would be a nice alternate win condition too, if they pull leyline or are able to some other way disrupt the combo.

I think it definitely deserves testing in flash/rector, though I think it's potential may be somewhat less than in other builds.

[Zherbus]

It belongs in Ichorid to be sure. I don't think it belongs in anything with Brainstorm (as Seer just mentioned). The two shouldn't co-exist. It doesn't make your deck effectively 52 cards, it makes it a 60-card mess. ELD's GaT seemed to do okay, but I am willing to bet that over time GaT players will realize they want those slots back and to stop losing life in the aggro-control wars.

[Jo84]

I disagree with you seer and Zherbus. As you stated, Street Wraith isn´t good with Brainstorm if you don´t have a shuffle effect, but that´s a problem Brainstorm always has. Without a shuffle effect you will not see a new card for the next two turns. Street Wraith however is the reason you WILL see a new card in the second turn after brainstorm. With shuffle effect, it´s obvious that Street Wraith is just great.

The life loss might be a problem but that only means you have to know whether to cycle the wraith or not. If the game ends early the two or four life you lose due to Wraith aren´t important anyways.
If the game goes on, Street Wraith can also win you the match as much as it can lose it.

[Zherbus]

Brainstorm + Street Wraith's drawing awkwardness is one aspect, but what about over-streamlining the deck? The environment is incredibly varied (for Vintage's standard) and Vintage decks already have a ton of mandatory cards (Moxen, Lotus, Ancestral, Walk, 4 Force of Will, etc) eating up necessary space as it is. The question you need to ask yourself when considering 8 Wraith+Brainstorm is if over-streamlining is a bad thing? In GaT, the answer is ambiguous to be sure, but I think that in a format where it's not always the beatdown, it's gotta consider the times it assumes the control role.

[zeus-online]

I don't really think that there will ever be a hard rule for this card. The usage should, like almost every other card, be decided individually for every deck.
Saying that it should be included in everything or nothing is just plain wrong. It's kinda like a new "Fetchland" sure it will fit into alot of decks, but not every deck can really use it.

I agree with Zherbus that it might eat up deck space which might be better spend on utility cards.

/Zeus

[Jo84]

well, the tests I played with stephens GAT list, Street Wraith was good and I couldn´t think of opt or something else instead, cause it costs 0. But I know what you mean and that´s why Street Wraith isn´t a card that fits in every deck, cause not every deck has space for it or needs its thinning effect.

Actually I think you can fit it into Hulk Flash, Ichorid, Doomsday and GAT pretty well, although it has to prove it´s worth the space in Flash and GAT.

[Akuma]

I would rather use Opt in GAT than Street Wraith. Opt helps further your gameplan on different levels (digs for land, pitches, grows dryad, reduces deck size, doesn't cost life) while Street Wraith cycles for 2 life...

[wethepeople]

I would rather use Opt in GAT than Street Wraith. Opt helps further your gameplan on different levels (digs for land, pitches, grows dryad, reduces deck size, doesn't cost life) while Street Wraith cycles for 2 life...

You also failed to point out that Street Wraith cycles for free (mana-wise), whereas the proposed Opt costs .

[Scott_Limoges]

I love this card.  I'm going to state some obvious points about the card because this is the first dedicated thread about it and I haven't posted any thoughts about it yet.  Some of the points are posted above.

- this card will be a staple in vintage...similar to brainstorm, duress, chalice ect.

- it reduces cards in a deck virtually, and down to 56.

- it increases variability of keeping opening hands and thus mulligan decisions

- it has excellent synergy with top deck tutors

- its a 3/4 creature and its black

- each use requires 1/10 of life

- its not storm and can't be played from graveyard


I know there are more points and would like to hear them, if you chose to share.  I'm going to be conservative and say Swampwalk doesn't count as a full point.

When building decks, one of the most difficult choices is determining the 59th and 60th card.  I predict that Street Wraith will either solve this issues or create a similar issue...determining the 55th or 56th card.

[madmanmike25]

Here is my simplified opinion of the card:  

Street Wraith is only as good as the card you draw from cycling it.  

It is very hard to establish its utility value and therefore it should NOT be included in every deck.  The thought of SW in Stax or Fish........horrible.  Would you want to reveal SW off a Dark Confidant?  

My only experience with the card is in my 1-land Belcher deck.   Total hit-or-miss.  Cycling into a Serum Powder blows.  Cycling into a Lotus is great.  You never know.  It is a card I would rather draw into than have in my opening 7, which is the exact opposite of Powder.  I don't think it makes enough impact to validate the whole '56 card deck' concept.  At least it never felt that way from my experience.  It's just a place-holder for the next card, and you don't always see it.

In short:  It's ok in some decks, bad in others.  I think Ichorid and fast combo decks can utilize SW best.  

[Aardshark]

Brainstorm + Street Wraith's drawing awkwardness is one aspect, but what about over-streamlining the deck? The environment is incredibly varied (for Vintage's standard) and Vintage decks already have a ton of mandatory cards (Moxen, Lotus, Ancestral, Walk, 4 Force of Will, etc) eating up necessary space as it is. The question you need to ask yourself when considering 8 Wraith+Brainstorm is if over-streamlining is a bad thing? In GaT, the answer is ambiguous to be sure, but I think that in a format where it's not always the beatdown, it's gotta consider the times it assumes the control role.

But wouldn't this "over-streamlining" argument apply equally to Smemmian's "Super Bauble" (0 cc to draw card immediately), or even to a supercharged version that allowed pre-mulligan and mid-brainstorm cycling, and therefore really is the functional equivilent of a 56 card deck? (Note: I realize this is not Street Wraith.)

In other words Zherbus, aren't you really suggesting that a 56 card deck might not be optimal in the current, diverse t1 format because you've "over-streamlined" your deck? But if a 56 card deck is "over-streamlined", might it not also be true that the 60 card decks we've all grown grown acustomed to playing are equally "over-streamlined"? 

I doubt anyone here would accept that we should be running more than 60 card decks.  Thus, if a 56 card deck lacks room for cards needed because "mandatory cards . . . eating up necessary space", doesn't this just mean our assumption about mandatory cards (or alternatively, cards we think we need to make room for) need to be reconsidered?

In sum, I think any argument against street wraith based on opportunity costs of cards you'd rather run (i.e. "over-streamlining"), rather than its in-game costs (such as life-loss, difficult mulligan decisions, and arguably poor interaction with other cards like brainstorm, dark confidant etc.) are flawed -- unless you're willing to accept the possibility that a 60 card deck is "overstreamlined" (anyone?)

As an aside (and perhaps beyond the scope of this topic):  If there were no rule on deck size, what would the optimal size of a reactive Type 1 deck? (That is, setting aside Doomsdayesque auto-win combo piles)? I would be astounded if the answer actually turned out to be 60 . . . a number picked by WOTC more or less arbitrary at the beginning of time.

[edited to fix typos]

[Scott_Limoges]

As an aside (and perhaps beyond the scope of this topic):  If there were no rule on deck size, what would the optimal size of a reactive Type 1 deck? (That is, setting aside Doomsdayesque auto-win combo piles)? I would be astounded if the answer actually turned out to be 60 . . . a number picked by WOTC more or less arbitrary at the beginning of time.

Nice question.  Each deck would have a different optimal size, dependant on what the deck does.  Combo would want a 7 card deck.  Fast aggro might want an 11 card deck.  Control, a 20 card deck.  Factors like how a deck wins and role determine this.  I think we can agree that anything over 30 cards would almost never be optimal, it would make starting hands to random.  That said, 56 cards is far from limiting.

[Malhavoc]

I'm sorry about Italian language of the link, but the summary is: "I too think about SW being inserted anywhere but Oath or Freeze.dec".

This is the link for the lists I assembled as "tests" for non-credent about the SW-Maniacal-Era

LINKED LISTS ON OUR SITE

Well, Maxx, that was the summary of your post and someone else'  Many others, me among them, seem to think the opposite: the anti-sinergy with brainstorm, Mind's Desire, and the much more difficult Mulligans on top of everything make it a questionable card in many decks.

[Sextiger]

I didn't see this mentioned but ST is great in Long just for the added backup win condition, not to mention the obvious deck thinning.

[zeus-online]

As an aside (and perhaps beyond the scope of this topic):  If there were no rule on deck size, what would the optimal size of a reactive Type 1 deck? (That is, setting aside Doomsdayesque auto-win combo piles)? I would be astounded if the answer actually turned out to be 60 . . . a number picked by WOTC more or less arbitrary at the beginning of time.

Street wraith dosn't quite make your deck size 56, if deck sizes where different, say 40 cards instead of 60 we would first have to re-calculate how much mana we would need to add...With street wraith you really can't lower your mana count by much, since a hand with Land, Land, mox is keepable....SW,SW, mox is an auto-mull.

When building decks, one of the most difficult choices is determining the 59th and 60th card.  I predict that Street Wraith will either solve this issues or create a similar issue...determining the 55th or 56th card.

It's true that the last few cards are usually hard to decide on, but usually its because there are several great cards that could be added rather then a lack of cards that are good enough....That is my experience anyway.

/Zeus

[Aardshark]

As an aside (and perhaps beyond the scope of this topic):  If there were no rule on deck size, what would the optimal size of a reactive Type 1 deck? (That is, setting aside Doomsdayesque auto-win combo piles)? I would be astounded if the answer actually turned out to be 60 . . . a number picked by WOTC more or less arbitrary at the beginning of time.

Street wraith dosn't quite make your deck size 56, if deck sizes where different, say 40 cards instead of 60 we would first have to re-calculate how much mana we would need to add...With street wraith you really can't lower your mana count by much, since a hand with Land, Land, mox is keepable....SW,SW, mox is an auto-mull.
/Zeus

As I tried to make clear, I'm well aware that "overstreamlining" is not the only argument against Street Wraith. Rather, I was suggesting that it is not a valid argument against Street Wraith.

As a (fun?) thought experiment, I started the following thread in the "Casual" forum to attempt to "solve" the format in which there are no libary restrictions: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33550.0.

(Aside--could someone PM me and let me know how to create hypertext links to regular texts (without having to include the http://www.etc...)?  Thanks in advance. Mods, feel free to delete this when you see it.)

[GoldenEyes]

There is about a 40% chance of getting a street wraith in your opening hand (See math below from someone smarter then me.).  That means in about half your games you only get to look at 6 of your cards in your opening hand.

This card keeps getting brought up for inclusion in fast combo. Because combo is very bomb based, it seems that each card is more important to knowing if the hand will do what it needs to in order to win.  In control, the hands are much more about the overall flow and one card is less important.  This may be too much of a generalization, but if anything, control needs to know the cards as much as combo does.

On to the pros.  Say you have 50 cards left in your deck.  The chances of drawing a given one of are 2% (1/50).  If you have 46 cards its 2.17% (1/46).  That’s a .17% chance increase.  

So, unless my math is wrong you’re getting to see 6 out of 7 cards in 40% of your games for only a .17 % increase in the chance of drawing a card.  

Wraith is amazing in decks like doomsday and is a complete bomb in ichorid, but only because the cycling does something to advance the strategy.  There is nothing I would like better then to see my opponent cycle wraith blindly on their first turn because I am already a step ahead of them with a hand I wanted.  

EDIT: Used the correct numbers for the math

[Aardshark]

Your math actually is wrong, but you're conclusion isn't too far off. The way to calculate this is to calculate the chance that Street Wraith *not* in your opening hand:
56/60 (probability its not the first card) X 55/59 (probability its not the second card) X 54/58 X 53/57 X 52/56 x 51/55 x 50/54 (probability its not the 7th) = .6005...

So, there's approximately a 60% street wraith WILL NOT be in your opening hand, which means there's a 40% chance it will be in your opening hand

(1 minus 60%= 40%).   

 

[diopter]

The old Street Wraith thread.

[Jo84]

street wraith in your opening hand isn´t great, but you should only play street wraith if any other card than the other 56 is unnecessary, so if I keep a hand with Wraith it´s better than the hand I would hold without wraith but a stupid other card, because Street Wraith let me go one card deeper in my deck. And that´s the only point that counts for decks that can play Street Wraiths.

[GoldenEyes]

Thanks for the help Aardshark.  The math seemed wrong, but I was unsure why.  Like you said though, my point remains the same.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

I actually think that Zherbus has a relevant point in the opportunity-cost department (I was actually running 61 cards in Gifts usually because the mana worked better for me -flood screw issues - and I wasn't ready to cut either of the weakest non-mana cards in the deck, CoV and Rebuild. So yes, I think over-streamlining is possible even with a 60 card deck).
I also have a different argument for not just yet running Street Wraith in every deck:  For example if you cut the fourth Merchant Scroll from your deck for a Street Wraith, you actually decrease your chance of drawing one specific bomb - Ancestral Recall, Mystical Tutor, TfK, Gush or even FoW in this case - while increasing your chance to draw any general bomb in the course of the game. So in a deck where its cards are actually interchangable and/or the whole strategy is simply "find as many bombs as possible and cast them", Street Wraith is insanely good. In a deck that wants to draw specific bombs (or cards) at a certain time, Wraith looses much of it's appeal. This becomes extreme in a case like me running Opt over Wraith in GAT simply because not drawing the right card with your cantrip sucks so much in the deck (prime example here is digging for land or anything but yet another land - I actually bottom the top card at least 50% of the time, I specifically looked out for this when trying to decide between Wraith and Opt. I still would probably have gone with Wraith if the additional in game issues - lifeloss, Brainstorm and having to mulligan 1 land + Wraith hands - hadn't given me even more reason to go with Opt. Note: Before this comes up, Opt actually digs you through that misfired Brainstorm even faster than Wraith, allowing you to see a new card directly on the next turn).

What I'm aiming at is that, while in theory a 56 card deck draws your broken cards more regularly than a 60 card deck, most of our broken cards need other cards of a certain type to be efficient. For Fastbond to be good, you first need a Gush, for Will to be good you need a stocked graveyard, etc. The fact that not all bombs are created equal - far from it, actually - makes card-quality effects sometimes actually better than a reduced decksize.

Let's ignore the in-game issues of Street Wraith for the moment, though. In a deck that is actually constructed from the vantage-point of X% bombs, X%mana, X% disruption (the power-value of any card is either 99-100 or 0 without shadings in between) with the plan of just continuing to play bombs till the opponent is dead, Street Wraith should be insane and easy to add by just cutting the weakest bombs and mana-sources keeping the ratio between the two the same. GrimLong might very well fit this definition of a deck(the only thing to stop it from being so might be mulligan-issues or, unlikely, the weakening of Necro/Bargain. I can't tell, I didn't test Long with Street Wraith yet).
The same is true for a deck like MonoBlue that is built to recreate the same game as consistently as possible (after all, if all your deck is (simplified) just counters + mana + random wincondition, it is a lot better to be drawing the better counters/mana sources more often). As the power-value and application of all of the cards is nearly equal in any situation anyway, removing the slightly weaker cards for Street Wraith is a clear upgrade .
Here Street Wraiths life-cost should cause some relevant problems, though, I guess. But what do I know, maybe Street Wraith is the best possible wincondition for a monoU deck that figures out a way to cast it, after all it's at least never dead in your hand early game so you don't have your wincondition mash up the perfect ratio of counterspells to manasources.

The other extreme where Wraith shines is a deck that has only a single relevant card and tries to insure it draws it asap in any way necessary while still getting benefits from Wraith once it has that bomb. The example here would be Ichorid. The whole deck only searches for an opening hand Bazaar and otherwise dies. While Ichorid runs Wraith for the extra-speed it lends to dredging, it is presumably better to keep a mulligan to two (or even three) that is nothing but Street Wraiths than to continue mulliganing for Bazaar. After all you will see more cards that might be Bazaar thanks to those Street Wraiths than you will see from further mulliganing (or at least as many, with slight bonuses for possibly finding a dredger to go with it at the same time).

Now on the contrary let's assume a (theoretical) deck that has a few true bombs that are simply to powerfull to ignore because they win the game when they're played, the amount of mana necessary to keep it running, a bunch of Silver Bullets meant for one special matchup each plus a huge tutoring engine to find exactly the silver-bullet it needs right now. Assuming further that the number of silver-bullets run is the absolute minimum to have one for each deck in the metagame and that without playing that bullet, you always loose the game against that deck. Street Wraith (or reducing deck-size, for that matter) would be horrible in such a deck if you cannot replace everything but tutors and bombs with Wraiths. You would either cut mana below what is necessary, remove a card that says "I win" on it independant of the matchup (the bombs), reduce your chance in one common matchup to no option but winning on bombs (silver-bullet) or make it actually less likely for you to find your game-winning silver-bullet or bomb in the first place (removing a tutor-effect). The only way to cut cards from this deck and make it better would be to have one of the decks it's silver-bullets target become a low enough presence to be able to remove the MD bullet with no new deck taking over for it. Only then would it be desirable to make the deck smaller.

Now while this theoretical deck is obviously pretty ridiculous, many Vintage decks resemble this deck in a general sense, imo. The amount of bombs in the typical Vintage deck that you want to see all the time and in any situation is surprisingly low (pretty much only Ancestral Recall and maybe Demonic Tutor are basically always better than any other card you could have drawn - just in case anybody wonders why people play so many Merchant Scrolls lately). This means any Vintage deck includes, by necessity, a lot of cards that are situationally good or bad (some more often than others, compare Lotus or Will to say LoA). This is why anything that digs further through your library - even at a cost - might be better than just reducing decksize, it just depends on the cost for doing so (to be extreme, I think we can all agree that Demonic Tutor shouldn't almost never be cut for Street Wraith). That is why Brainstorm is such a good card. It digs very far for one of the cards that are good at this moment for a very low cost. It's also why Steve adding Merchant Scroll to the Gifted-shell was so huge. With 4 bombs that said GG pretty much all the time (Gifts), running 4 more of them allowed the removal of more situational bombs from the deck. That the Scrolls find the one card that is really never bad (Ancestral) and can find the one other card that is at times the only possible way to not loose (FoW) was just icing on the cake.

Now, if we really could reduce decksize instead of adding Street Wraith, the cost would be completely limited to the opportunity-cost Zherbus brought up and it would be very hard to find cases were there is really no card that could go out of the deck, combined with a slight redesigning of the manabase (I would stipulate that Gifts possibly might have been such a deck, at least if you wanted to keep the percentages of Disruption vs Mana vs Bombs correct, but who cares, the deck is dead).
Now as for running Opt in GAT, I'm sure with time it would be possible to create a 56 card GAT deck. I'm also of the opinion that Street Wraith doesn't create a functional 56 card GAT deck. The two main issues here are in my opinion the mulliganing-process (the deck is designed to keep one-land + cantrip hands. To do this, you need a sufficent amount of cantrips or you need to run more mana to get fewer 1 land hands, increasing the likelyhood for those with only one land to have a cantrip. You have to do one or the other, in spite of adding Street Wraith, though roughly each three Wraithes can count as a land in a deck that has roughly 1/3 mana.) and the fact that Opts effective cost goes toward 0 really fast during the game (at which point it creates a 56 card deck better than Wraith does), netting you the ability to dig better for, at this point, no cost at all (I guess I have to expand on this for it to be clear. In spite of what many people might say, GAT is not a mana-tight deck. Actually the deck is designed in a way so that you are supposed to be casting cantrips in addition to playing your normal spells almost every turn. Because of this once you reach three to four mana, the first cantrip per turn is essentially free in so far as it doesn't interfere with playing GATs business-spells any more. What that means is that in the mid to lategame, Street Wraith actually costs you an effective 2 life more than Opt does for a lesser effect. Other decks like Slaver or Gifts that use quite a few high-casting-cost spells and effects are not built in a way to faciliate this cost-reduction effect till very late in the game generally, which is why Opt is so crappy in these decks).

Well, this is long enough to make my point I guess. Please try to not burn me at the stake. Thank you.


/edit: Yes, I have changed my opinion of the card since I first saw it in the spoiler and started the other Wraith threat. I still think quite a few decks could profit from it, but by far not as many as I originally thought.

[Methuselahn]

Street Wraith:

"Do I want to see this card in my opening hand?"

"Do I want to draw into this card?"

Two questions that I often ask myself when I build decks.  Street Wraith fails most of the time. 

Regarding Street Wraith's effect, I'd much rather have the actual broken card in my hand rather than a big question mark.

[diopter]

Street Wraith:

"Do I want to see this card in my opening hand?"

"Do I want to draw into this card?"

Two questions that I often ask myself when I build decks.  Street Wraith fails most of the time. 

Regarding Street Wraith's effect, I'd much rather have the actual broken card in my hand rather than a big question mark.

Except, you know, the actual "broken card" (whatever that may be) will be in your deck, because instead of playing Wraith to give yourself a free non-zero chance of finding it, you're playing filler cards that you have to pay mana to play.

Of course a Street Wraith deck does not want to see its Street Wraiths, it would rather see one of the other 56 cards without having to play two life. However, when you do draw the Wraith, you would rather pay 2 life to turn it into one of your 56 more powerful cards, than have settle for one of your 4 least powerful cards.