[SCD] Serum Powder

[Smmenen]

I wanted to start a discussion on Serum Powder, but wanted to wait until my article went live today.

Specifically, I wanted to generate a discussion about what it's role is in Workshop decks, particularly post M11.

The general idea behind Serum Powder is to more consistently find Workshop.   This makes Workshop decks more consistent, and it reduces reliance on other cards.   Of course, there is a limit and a difference.  It's not like Dredge where you will aggressively mulligan to find Shop, so the idea is not to *rely* on Powder to find Shop, but to increase your odds.

 Against this benefit, there are two main drawbacks.

First, by adding Serum Powder, you increase your chances of finding Shop, but reduce your mana count.  Thus, you actually will increase your vulnerability to Wasteland because you have fewer lands to draw out of it.   

Secondly, you increase the number of dead draws you have.

Both points made inabove are mitigated by either 1) Crucible and Smokestack or 2) Beaters.   In the case of Crucible, you don't have to worry about getting Wasted.  In the case of Stack, Powder isn't a dead draw, as it can feed Stack.   That would seem like Powder is best in a Stax shell.  But, if you play a turn one beater, wasteland is a tempo loss for the opponent, so it also seems good in an aggro shell.   

All of these leads me to a suspicion and two questions.

1) I am beginning to suspect that Serum Powder is not what I once thought it was, per its application in Dredge.  That is, it's not a card that you use to guarantee finding the card you need, but it's actually more like a free draw seven or a Brainstorm: it smooths out card quality.   This is a conceptual shift for me.

However, it doesn't mean you can't use Serum Powder like you do in Dredge.  For example, with Leylien of the Void, you generally do.  but with Leyline of Sanctity, you probably don't.   

2) Should Workshops use more Powders?

3) What number?  I could see running 1, 2, 3 or 4 maindeck.   

[LotusHead]

In a mono-brown Shop deck with no/few null rods, Serum Powders can be a fine card.

Even when drawn late (ie, after turn 0), it does actually tap for mana, and combined with Karn, can be a beefy beater.

[Smmenen]

In a mono-brown Shop deck with no/few null rods, Serum Powders can be a fine card.

Even when drawn late (ie, after turn 0), it does actually tap for mana, and combined with Karn, can be a beefy beater.

What if you want to Powder for Null Rod?   

[TheBrassMan]

Against this benefit, there are two main drawbacks.

First, by adding Serum Powder, you increase your chances of finding Shop, but reduce your mana count.  Thus, you actually will increase your vulnerability to Wasteland because you have fewer lands to draw out of it.   

Secondly, you increase the number of dead draws you have.

Both points made inabove are mitigated by either 1) Crucible and Smokestack or 2) Beaters.   In the case of Crucible, you don't have to worry about getting Wasted.  In the case of Stack, Powder isn't a dead draw, as it can feed Stack.   That would seem like Powder is best in a Stax shell.  But, if you play a turn one beater, wasteland is a tempo loss for the opponent, so it also seems good in an aggro shell.   

I think I'm missing something in your reasoning.  Serum Power lowers your mana count if and only if you're cutting lands for it.  While I would understand why someone might do that, I dont understand why someone couldn't just start with a good manabase and add Serum Powders.

I get what you're saying about fighting Wasteland, but I dont understand how adding Crucible and Beaters decreases the amount of dead draws you have.  Was that what you were saying?

[Oath of Happy]

In a non-Dredge deck this has always been my view on Serrum Powder:

If you draw a bad openning hand, you can use the powder to get you a free new hand of 7.  However, any 7 card hand that has Serrum Powder in it is pretty much already a Mulligan, since it has 6 cards plus a Serum Powder, so why wouldnt you just have wanted to draw a 7 card hand to begin with.

This statement doesn't apply to dredge, because in Dredge, all that matters is that you get Bazaar, so if you draw your 7 and it has Bazaar an 1-4 Powders, its still a great hand too keep.  A Shop hand will lose if the rest of the cards suck.

[Will]

From my experiences, Serum Powder can be tremendous specifically in a MUD Stax deck that focuses on redundancy to win its games.  To answer 1: I may be wrong in my approach but the way I use Serum Powder is if it's in my opener and the hand doesn't have Workshop or otherwise isn't very very strong, I Serum Powder it away. (Unless it has a disproportionate number of a very important card in it.)  In doing so I improve my chance of drawing a better opening hand and thin out my deck which in a MUD shell is one of the only good forms of deck manipulation available. In response to 2, it certainly depends on your deck shell and while I don't think the card fits in every build of Stax or Workshops it is very good in Espresso Stax.  As far as 3. goes I don't have the time or the play group to test every different variation of Stax but if you are playing Espresso Stax the answer is 4.  

[Troy_Costisick]

Well, you have to look at the rest of your mana base, don't you?  If you're playing 4x Ancient Tomb + 4x City of Traitors + some number of Crucibles, then you probably don't need Serum Powder.  Powder, IMHO, is best in Shop decks playing more expensive cards like Stacks, Masticore, and Trike that also have lots of redundancy.  This way, exiling cards with Powder won't hurt as much.  In those kinds of decks you're relying on Shop a lot more than a deck that caps out at CMC 4.  For Powder to be really successful, you have to be able to throw away hands with gas but not mana but also be able to deal with at least 1 dead draw per game.  So, like you say Stephen, a deck packed with Crucible, Stax, Masticore, and lots of Resistors could best use Powder.  Stax and Masticore give you something to do with it after turn 0, Crucible protexts your mana base, and resistors are just sorta necessary now-a-days. 

The kind of deck that could not use Powder, IMO, would be a Metalworker deck that tries to combo out with Staff or Umbral Mantle.  It would just be too risky.

Peace,

-Troy

[Gambit]

The tap for 1 ability is not irrelevant. Remember that serum powder is castable. Another mana source with a sometimes free incredible ability is very good. A mox is a dead draw late game, but people don't complain about that, workshop decks are very draw dependent for getting through the early game, this card helps greatly in a deck with large amounts of redundancy.

Think about the following

 Would non-workshop decks play Serum Powder if the converted mana cost was 1 colorless mana? That is basically what this card usually is in a workshop deck. (yes I know it doesn't exactly work like that, buy you get the idea)

[Bibendum]

If you draw a bad openning hand, you can use the powder to get you a free new hand of 7.  However, any 7 card hand that has Serrum Powder in it is pretty much already a Mulligan, since it has 6 cards plus a Serum Powder, so why wouldnt you just have wanted to draw a 7 card hand to begin with.

I disagree with this because if your playing Stax there are so many other applications for serum. Karn makes it a beater, Its a permanent to blow up with stack. Its useful as your mana source for Rishadan Port. Im not saying that this is the best card in any of these situations but I am saying with its ability to let you mull plus all of those I think its an auto include in an "expresso" stax style list.

[GrandpaBelcher]

Serum Powder is great in the opening hand.  If you don't like the looks of it, you can mulligan for free!  That's great when you're digging for something specific like Bazaar, Workshop, or a solid hand with your favorite combo deck.  Unfortunately, when things go awry and the game goes longer than you expect, having four (or even fewer) Serum Powders in your deck can be awful.  Sure, you can be put into plenty of situations where you need to draw card X or perish, and maybe I have an abnormally good memory for these situations, but I hate nothing more than drawing Serum Powder there.  I don't think card X has ever been Serum Powder.

Anyway, Serum Powder does make for some great opening hands in MUD (or even Mono-Red Shops), but aggressive mulliganing with well-constructed deck and well-tuned mana base can do much of the same.  And even though Serum Powder does have some uses past turn one, I still don't really want to see one.

Edit: Pokemon card and so on.

[DubDub]

Sorry for the horrendous quality.  This is a cell-phone photo of a quick sketch.

The vertical axis' title should be 'Card Quality'.  Assume that we could actually determine values for card quality, and ignore quality derived from synergy.  We could then make the above graph of quality by 'Card Number', ordered so that 'Card Quality' is weakly decreasing in 'Card Number'.  The two horizontal lines are 'Expected Mean' and 'Expected Mean w/Serum Powders', because we assume that Serum Powders evaluated on their own merits can't compete with the replacement level 57th-60th cards.  Clearly there's a difference between the two expected means, but there's really a distribution around each mean.  The expected mean can however be improved upon in practice by mulliganing terrible hands, and when playing Serum Powder, Powdering terrible hands.

I would argue that the Card Quality curve is very sharp in Dredge, since the only four cards that 'matter' are Bazaars.  Powdering then can have very high returns.  Serum Powder may also be playable in Shops so long as this claim is met:

Average hands with Shops decks are threatening enough.  The marginal loss in expected value due to running Serum Powder is acceptable for the additional utility gained in practice by avoiding terrible hands.

[Smmenen]

Serum Powder is great in the opening hand.  If you don't like the looks of it, you can mulligan for free!  That's great when you're digging for something specific like Bazaar, Workshop, or a solid hand with your favorite combo deck.  Unfortunately, when things go awry and the game goes longer than you expect, having four (or even fewer) Serum Powders in your deck can be awful.  Sure, you can be put into plenty of situations where you need to draw card X or perish, and maybe I have an abnormally good memory for these situations, but I hate nothing more than drawing Serum Powder there.  I don't think card X has ever been Serum Powder.

Anyway, Serum Powder does make for some great opening hands in MUD (or even Mono-Red Shops), but aggressive mulliganing with well-constructed deck and well-tuned mana base can do much of the same.  And even though Serum Powder does have some uses past turn one, I still don't really want to see one.

Edit: Pokemon card and so on.

That's why I think that 2-3 Powders maindeck might be the right number.   My original Gencon list had 2 maindeck Powders and 2 in the board with 8 Leylines, giving me 5 sb slots to play wth, like 3 Crucible and 2 Razormanes, or something along those lines.   

[Rico Suave]

If you draw a bad openning hand, you can use the powder to get you a free new hand of 7.  However, any 7 card hand that has Serrum Powder in it is pretty much already a Mulligan, since it has 6 cards plus a Serum Powder, so why wouldnt you just have wanted to draw a 7 card hand to begin with.

The real question is this:

In a Workshop deck, how important is that 7th card if your other 6 are worth keeping?  

[policehq]

If you draw a bad openning hand, you can use the powder to get you a free new hand of 7.  However, any 7 card hand that has Serrum Powder in it is pretty much already a Mulligan, since it has 6 cards plus a Serum Powder, so why wouldnt you just have wanted to draw a 7 card hand to begin with.

The real question is this:

In a Workshop deck, how important is that 7th card if your other 6 are worth keeping?  

Beyond that, what about the 7 that don't have Serum Powder that are good only because you used Serum Powder in the original 7?

[Cruel Ultimatum]

Serum Powder is not for finding Workshop per say, but for finding a hand that does something, since MUD doesn't have a draw engine, it relies on having a good hand, and serum powder helps that. On that note, I can't really see playing powder, unless it's 4 or 0

[Explosive Engineer]

it's not a card that you use to guarantee finding the card you need, but it's actually more like a free draw seven or a Brainstorm: it smooths out card quality.

My testing suggests that this statement is true, but like Andy I disagree with your assumption that Serum Powder is in competition for deck space with lands. Let's take a look at some key observations you had made recently:

"Generally speaking, there are two kinds of hands where I lose with this deck:

1) Bad mana:

A good example would be this:

Wasteland, City of Traitors, Null Rod, Thorn of Amethyst, Juggernaut, Lodestone Golem, Sphere of Resistance

You have to mulligan this kind of hand. I’d keep a hand with two Moxen, City of Traitors, and spells, but you can’t keep that kind of hand. Even if one of the Spheres were a Mana Vault. It’s that kind of hand that makes Serum Powder tempting.

2) All lock parts and mana, but no beaters:

A good example would be this:

Ancient Tomb, Mishra’s Workshop, Wasteland, Chalice, Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, and Null Rod

You can pile on the Sphere effects, but sometimes you can’t seal the deal. And eventually, you’re opponent can play a Tinker, or something else sufficiently annoying to win the game. It’s important to have a way to seal the deal. Serum Powder can help..." - S.M., First Place With MUD, July,  2010 http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/19631_So_Many_Insane_Plays_First_Place_with_MUD.html

These two types of hands are indicative of the fundamental problem with this deck:  lots of powerful synergistic effects, but no way to sculpt your hand.  While Serum Powder does not selectively solve this problem, it mitigates the risk that you get stuck with one of the hands you've described here by allowing you to see more cards.  In a deck that is so incredibly reliant on its opening hand to check the opponent, this type of effect may be valuable.  

Opponents of serum powder may argue that you can draw it when you would otherwise need a lock piece, threat, or mana source.  In abstract this true, since serum powder is there instead of something else.  However, due to the grave reliance on the strength of it's opening hand the ability to smooth out card quality has anecdotally outweighed this drawback.  Regardless, 'top deck mode' is a weak place for any deck to be, so this point is relatively loose.

[meadbert]

Powder is far from a dead draw.

Just consider the Mox, Shop, Powder, Resistor play.  It means your opponent cannot do anything other than drop Moxen next turn, but you can play any card in your deck.

Powder also protects from Waste in that case since you still have 2 Mana even if Shop is Wasted.  Powder is a Mox once in play and that it dodges Chalice is not insignificant.

[Smmenen]

it's not a card that you use to guarantee finding the card you need, but it's actually more like a free draw seven or a Brainstorm: it smooths out card quality.

My testing suggests that this statement is true, but like Andy I disagree with your assumption that Serum Powder is in competition for deck space with lands. Let's take a look at some key observations you had made recently:

It's true that my assumption that is not necessarily true; but it's likely true.  For example, if we add 4 powders, and take out three business spells and one land, you've cut a land.   It's only one, but you've cut one. 

It's likely that you take out two mana and two business,splitting the difference. 

[GrandpaBelcher]

Powder is far from a dead draw.

Just consider the Mox, Shop, Powder, Resistor play.  It means your opponent cannot do anything other than drop Moxen next turn, but you can play any card in your deck.

Powder also protects from Waste in that case since you still have 2 Mana even if Shop is Wasted.  Powder is a Mox once in play and that it dodges Chalice is not insignificant.

Okay, so it's not a dead draw in that situation, but you could have had another lock piece or another land and your hand probably would have been even better.  You even found Workshop without using Serum Powder.  I'm just saying that when you're on the ropes and you really need to draw an answer (maybe Null Rod for their Time Vault, Sculpting Steel for their Inkwell, or Duplican or Trike for their Trygon) and you knock your deck, look to the sky, and rip Serum Powder, you feel like a complete jackass.

Saying that you can use Karn to have your Serum Powder attack or that you can sacrifice it to Smokestack or tap it to Tanglewire are going to be this thread's "Remember, it's blue so it pitches to Force" for me.  Any artifact can attack using Karn (except Null Rod, I guess) or likewise be sacced or tapped.  Any land will make you mana.  You're removing better mid-game (turns 3+) to improve your early game (turns 1-3).  I'm not sure if that's worth it.  Maybe running 1-3 Serum Powders is the way to go.  Maybe run Powder and Bazaar together.

Basically, I agree with everything Smmenen just ninja'd me with.

 

[meadbert]

What percentage of the time do you guys mulligan when playing with Shops?

[zeus-online]

How many hands will you be forced to mulligan due to drawing multiple serum powders? While it increases the power of mulligans it might also force you into taking more muligans.

[meadbert]

So compare Serum Powder to your 4 worst cards otherwise.  How many hands do you keep that contain 2 of your 4 worst cards?
"Worst Card" varies from deck to deck, but do you keep hands with 2 City of Traitors or 2 Rishadan Ports?


Now if you have no Shop in that hand then mulliganing is s great thing since you now have  56 card deck that still has 4 Shops and is now without 2 of your worst cards.
This is way better than if you had 2xPort or 2xCity.

The only way multiple Powders burns you is when you get stuck with like 5+ mana sources including Shop and 2 Powders.  Then you do not want to Powder mulligan because you want your shops available.  This is rare.

When I draw a hand with 2 Powders my usual concern is after I Powder mulligan I only have 2 Powders left in my deck.

There are plenty of keepable hands with Shop and 2 Powders.

In evaluating Powders the key questions are what percentage of the time do you mulligan hands that have at least one of your 4 worst cards and what is the interest rate in magic.  By interest rate I mean how much more valuable is it to have a resource this turn rather than next turn.

I estimate the interest rate to be about 0.4.  If it were higher than .5 than Dark Ritual would be better than Mox Jet and if it were lower .33 than Mox Sapphire would be better than Black Lotus.  ( I realize it is more complicated than this since Rit needs a black source to get started and Lotus gets all 5 colors instead of just blue)

If you mulligan 50% of the time when you have one of your worst 4 cards, then that is 20% of the time that Powder saves you since you will have Powder in 40% of your hands of 7.  This compounds because you can Powder mulligan more than once. lets say that Powder saves on average .23 cards.

Assuming you did not Powder mulligan than each turn you have a 1/15 chance of top decking a Powder.
If you did Powder mulligan then it is even less.

So the negative value of all future Pokemon cards is 1/(1-r) which would be 2.5*1/15 on the draw which is about .17, but on the play where you do not draw on turn 1 it drops to 1.5*1/15 = .10  Each is less than .23.

This assumes that in game Powder is a Pokemon card.  As has already been covered it is far from that.

Furthermore this is just looking at number of relevant cards and make no reference to mana screw and mana flood.  Powder can even out both of these providing not just card advantage, but improving the ratios just as Brainstorm does for blue decks.

Saying Power converts Shop mana to non Shap man, sacks to Smokestack, adds mana to animate Spheres with Karn out, animates itself and taps to Tangle Wire is like saying a card pitches to Force.  Pitching to Force is no small consideration.  That is why the two most common Tinker targets are currently Blue.  Make DSC blue and we would see a lot more of him.

Blue decks run maybe 5 Force/MisD right now to pitch blue cards too.  Here we are talking about a lot more.  Each deck is different, but add up Smokeys, Wires, Welders, Bazaars and Karns and you usually get more than 4 cards.  Powder also activates Port, activates Factories, activates Expedition Map, activate Null Brooch and activates Jester's Cap.

Comparing Serum Powder to a dead card or a Pokemon card in Stax is just silly.  It is easily played since it costs 3 Shop mana and once on the stack it functions like a Mox except it is bigger when animated by Karn and is not countered by Chalice@0.  Sure topdecking Powder is worse than top decking Tangle Wire, but the same claim is true of top decking a Mox and no one suggests dropping Moxes to add more business in Stax.  Powder gives you explosive opening just like Moxes do.  It is fairly close to them in terms of power in Shop decks.

We had this debate a while back about whether Stax should run Black Lotus.  I was on the side of running Lotus, but that only reason this was even discussed was because that Shop deck already had Serum Powders to mulligan to broken hands anyway.

[Troy_Costisick]

Saying Power converts Shop mana to non Shap man, sacks to Smokestack, adds mana to animate Spheres with Karn out, animates itself and taps to Tangle Wire is like saying a card pitches to Force.  Pitching to Force is no small consideration.  That is why the two most common Tinker targets are currently Blue.  Make DSC blue and we would see a lot more of him.

Don't forget you can discard it to Masticore too.

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

I'm surprised to see no Bazaar vs Serum Powder debating going on here. People seem desperate for a real engine so why not just run one?

[Troy_Costisick]

I'm surprised to see no Bazaar vs Serum Powder debating going on here. People seem desperate for a real engine so why not just run one?

Bazaar doesn't tap for mana unless you play Riftstone Portal, and who wants to do that in a shop deck?  And people have talked about Bazaar in red builds.

[Prospero]

I'm surprised to see no Bazaar vs Serum Powder debating going on here. People seem desperate for a real engine so why not just run one?

It's not about a draw engine - that requires time and resources to set up. If I'm setting that up, then I'm not locking you out  Additionally, if I'm not running red (and I think that Goblin Welder is a trap right now, in that he requires more than he offers in return) then, in running Bazaar, I seek to fight by a blue mages rules with strictly weaker options. 

This is about controlling variance.  You take a percentage of the randomness out when you run the Powders.  You give yourself a level of consistency that Shop decks generally lack.  You don't need specific cards to win the game - you don't have to hit any one card in order to create a game state that your opponent cannot come back from.  Smokestack/Crucible/Sphere is just as effective as Crucible/Strip/Chalice, is just as effective as a first turn Lodestone/Chalice followed with Spheres/Wire, is just as effective as...

And since there is no one hand of seven that you need to find, it's about finding a particularly dense hand.  A hand that is capable of dropping as much pressure as possible as quickly as possible. 

5CStax is the Mona Lisa of Shop decks.  It is a work of art.  MUD is a model to efficiency and brutality.  It feels very German to me.  There is no art in MUD, there is only pressure. 

Cards that are good in one Shop deck are not necessarily good in another.  Shops are every bit as layered and intricate as Drains/FoWs, but most people don't think about Shops as religiously as a few Shop pilots do.  Bazaar of Baghdad has a place in many Shop decks, but I don't think that MUD has a home for it. 

[nineisnoone]

1) I am beginning to suspect that Serum Powder is not what I once thought it was, per its application in Dredge.  That is, it's not a card that you use to guarantee finding the card you need, but it's actually more like a free draw seven or a Brainstorm: it smooths out card quality.   This is a conceptual shift for me.

Calling it a "free draw seven" is misleading, because it's played in a completely different game state.  The most important difference between Serum Power and draw sevens is that you can't mulligan during normal play which heavily reduces the comparative advantage of the card.  So it's a "free draw seven" but realize you also have an option of a "free draw six" which doesn't cost you card slots in your deck.  So it only gives you +1 card advantage, and generally I have found that +1 card advantage is not worth a card slot. 

I don't think that it's has any dramatic advantages in a Shop deck.  I think it's perfectly playable, but I don't think it'll ever be a clear yes or no situation.  Most I think will tend against it because I feel that in terms of skill and deck-building the difficulty is higher than any other card.  In the long run it's much much easier to ruin the hell out of your deck with Serum Powder than feel significant gains from it in my opinion. 

But for me the primary criteria for the deck is how many "auto-win" cards I'm running.  For instance, if I'm playing Leyline of the Void against Dredge I would be much more likely to play it than if I was just running an assortment of Tormod's Crypts.  I don't know if that's the right paradigm, but for me it comports with how use the card. 

[meadbert]

generally I have found that +1 card advantage is not worth a card slot. 

Am I misunderstanding you, or are you suggesting you would not happily start with 8 cards in hand at the cost of having a Pokemon card in your deck?

[GrandpaBelcher]

generally I have found that +1 card advantage is not worth a card slot. 

Am I misunderstanding you, or are you suggesting you would not happily start with 8 cards in hand at the cost of having a Pokemon card in your deck?

That's not what Serum Powder does, though.  You start with 7 cards in your hand, which is the same amount your opponent is likely to start with, only you also have an additional drawback of Pokemon cards in your deck.

[meadbert]

And Brainstorm does not create card advantage.