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| BrianBoitano |
![]() Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 12:58 am |
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Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 124
Location: Houston, TX
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--- description ---
How useful is Ripple? In a ripple-based deck, very good. I check out the circumstances in which Ripple will be most useful, and suggest two different directions a Ripple deck could take.
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Hello MTG fans! It’s been a while since anyone posted a new article, and so I thought that since I don’t have a deck yet, I should pick a theme and try to make an article about it. With the imminent release of Coldsnap, we get the exciting new ability Ripple, which rewards you for having many copies of a spell in your deck by allowing you the chance to play those copies for free. The added bonus, and it can come up enough to be noted, is that you can stack the cards you rippled through on the bottom of your deck. Ripple has an obvious arena of incredible usefulness in limited, where the possibilities (and rules) allow for decks with 6 or 7 different copies of the same Ripple card in a 40-card deck, which is just silly-good.
But how useful is Ripple in constructed? There is the disadvantage of having 60-card decks, which means ripple 4 means (roughly calculated*) a 12 in 50, or 24% chance to ripple into a (single) second , and then if you hit that 24% chance, your chances of a third are only 17%. Looking at these numbers, it seems that you’re better off running coin flip cards, such as Stitch in Time or Odds (of Odds / Ends). With Stitch in Time, you have a 50% chance of getting a super-powerful ability, but an equal 50% chance of doing absolutely nothing. Odds is a dual-purpose card, and a true gamble. Either you Odds your own spell, and so you have a 50/50 chance of doubling it or wasting two cards (Odds + your spell), or you Odds your opponents spell, which is more beneficial as either you counter their spell (one-for-one, no card advantage) or you can hijack a copy (also one-for-one, but trickier). The advantage of Ripple over these is that these "randomness" cards either do something good (extra turn) or do nothing at all or something hard to control (copying a Pyroclasm when you have 3 or 4 toughness creatures out is decidedly not good).
So, Ripple may be good in constructed. It seems that we will have to try to increase the chances of Rippling into copies, since 24% is kinda low. What can we do to do this?
1. More than 4 copies of a card in the deck
Not possible outside of Relentless Rats, and we’re interested in Standard right now
2. Thin out the deck all things that aren’t ripple
Tutors, Green for land, black/blue for transmute and generic, white for land/auras, Jester’s Cap, Journeyor’s Kite, Sunforger, and Ghost Quarter
3. "Stacking" effects that go 5 or deeper into your library
Index (only barely), Descendant of Soramaro (sometimes, Warp World (janky)
4. Double the pleasure, double the fun.
Thrumming Stone means you’re increasing your overall chances of hitting it big, and instantly changes the power level of every nonland in your deck.
It seems that the second choice will be the easiest to work with. The fourth option will work in most decks, but will take a bit of acceleration to get going.
At this point, I’ve decided to take a Darwin-esque approach to the situation, and try more than one strategy in hopes that the comparison between them all will strengthen each as a whole. The two choices that came to me first were Green/White weenie, and Red/Blue Izzet.
Green shines in land tutors, which will be good to pump out a Thrumming Stone as quick as possible. White has always benefitted from getting lots of creatures out, and our environment is no exception.
Rippling Muscle
Creatures {20}
2 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Bull Aurochs
4 Squall Drifter
4 Surging Sentinels
Other Spells {20}
2 Congregation at Dawn (Thanks Memnarch  )
4 Condemn
4 Kjeldoran War Cry
4 Surging Might
4 Sound the Call
4 Thrumming Stone
Lands {20}
8 Forest
8 Plains
4 Temple Garden
This deck is pretty straight forward aggro with a bit of stall in Condemn and Sakura-Tribe Elder. Easiest, in my opinion, of the ripple build possibilities to make and to play. Memnarch Mastermind pointed out the Congregation at Dawn - Surging Sentinels interaction, so I opted out on 2 Weathered Wayfarers to make it fit. Having these only 2-ofs is alright, as they are costly and not good to ripple into.
Red and Blue are pretty weak in the percentage game, but focus more on functioning like a normal deck until Thrumming Stone hits the board. Red can help pump this out with rituals, and Blue is for card advantage.
Rippling Flames
Creatures {12}
4 Gelectrode
4 Wee Dragonauts
4 Puppeteer
Other Spells {28}
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lava Spike
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Surging Flame
4 Telling Time
4 Psychotic Fury
4 Thrumming Stone
Land {20}
8 Mountain
8 Island
4 Steam Vents
Oh, Brian, there you go with Wee Dragonauts again! Well, you gotta admit it works well with Ripple. If you have Wee Dragonauts or Gelectrode and Thrumming Stone out, expect the game to end soon. Getting there shouldn’t be too hard if you get off some early Rites.
Well, there it is. Sorry if it feels a bit rushed, I’m feeling tired
I feel that a reasonable conclusion to draw is that Ripple is a solid contender in casual. Somebody with better tournament skills than me might be able to showcase the ability, but until that time I think I’ll stick with some other, more reliable strategies.
* The calculations, for those interested:
* Average ripple card cost = (4 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2)/5 = 2.8, round to 3
* Turn at which 3 mana is typically available, ignoring acceleration = 3
* Typical starting size of deck = 60
* Unaugmented drawing of cards by turn 3 = 9 or 10 (drawing vs going first)
* So size of deck at (average) first chance to ripple is 50 to 51, we’ll say 50.
* Taking into account the first card being in your hand, and 4 total copies in the deck, there are 3 copies in 50 cards
* We’re going to ripple for 4 cards, so the statistical probability is:
first card, 3/50 = .06%
second card, 3/49 = .0612244%
third card, 3/48 = 0.0625%
fourth card, 3/47 = 0.0638297%
*Adding these together, we get the magic number %24.755%!
*Now, if one of the first 3 cards are the right ripple card, our answer will be different, but we don’t care about the % if we got the card, we’re satisfied at that point.[/b] |
"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time. |
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| Cobra |
![]() Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 7:17 pm |
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Joined: 12 Jul 2005
Posts: 1202
Location: Austin, TX, USA
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Well-written article. I very much like the way you approached ripple using probabilities. (My numbers disagreed slightly with yours, I’ll have to double-check... not enough to make any practical difference though.) I was hoping you’d carry that concept through all the way to the end.
For example, take the deck-filtering idea. Definitely worth mentioning, but for rippling purposes the actual effect is almost negligible. You’d have to pull a dozen cards out of the deck just to increase the odds to 30%.
On the other hand, Thrumming Stone almost doubles the odds. That’s almost definitely the way to go for those who want to base a deck on ripple cards. 
I also would have liked to see some discussion of the ripple cards themselves -- what’s available, and how do they compare with other cards with similar functions?
So, a good article overall, but IMO it doesn’t seem quite finished! |
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