@thewhitedragon69 said in [ELD] Once Upon a Time:

Keeping a hand with this as your first or second land drop, hoping to see one in the top 5, is almost always worse than just mulling. The times you use it turn 0 and wiff on a land you wanted, it will cost you games.

Keeping a bad hand has nothing to do the strength of a card, I'm unsure why that argument always comes up.

This being worse than a mulligan sorta depends on how much you have already mulliganed. Digging 5, even if you don't see a land, gets you 5 closer to a land you need. I think If ii have already mulled 2 times there are many instances where this will be better (contextual to the hand you keep) and once you have hit the 3rd mulligan you have to start thinking long and hard about the risks of mulling again at -1 vs keeping this and playing the odds.

I don't think you can judge this card by that metric though because most of the play this card get is going to be in decks that already do things that a normal deck would not do like Mulling for 1 card and not playing mana. The fact that this pitched to Force of Vigor is huge and if it was blue we would not even be having this conversation. Pitch cards as well as brainstorm, Jace, and Bazzar have made it so that the low end of a card is not nearly as relevant as what the top end of it can do.

@protoaddict

Isn’t keeping 7 with this better than mulling to 2 with this in pretty much all cases? I don’t think mulling, with the intent of casting this spell, gets you any closer to finding something with it. The top cards of the deck are unknown in all cases.

@daniel-worobec I am working on the math now, though it's a little tricky given how many different things it does. currently I'm trying to think through exactly how the simulation should preference taking various cards over each other in what circumstances(should a second dredger be taken over a hollow one, etc)

@desolutionist said in [ELD] Once Upon a Time:

Isn’t keeping 7 with this better than mulling to 2 with this in pretty much all cases? I don’t think mulling, with the intent of casting this spell, gets you any closer to finding something with it. The top cards of the deck are unknown in all cases.

Depends what your deck is doing. Dredge for instance would always mull a 7 hand with this in it and no Bazaar I think, because they can take subsequent mulls after that. It's not until they hit like 3 that they have to weigh if this is better or not, and in most cases it will be because even if you whiff you get 5 cards closer to what you need where as with mulls you would not.

A deck that plays in a more traditional way may not need just one card though, it is going to depend on the combination of things they have in hand, what they know about the opponents deck. etc. There will also be causes where people keep hands with this solely because it is a green card to pitch to FOV.

@blindtherapy

You could just output the distribution of options.

@vaughnbros the options are slightly dependant on what cards were kept earlier in the mulligan process of course when bottoming cards with ponder and then mulling the powder hand. in terms of what the average options are, given a 58 card deck where one bazaar and one OUAT are accounted for, that's easy enough.

@blindtherapy

Well it would be interesting to explore the best cards to bottom during the powder process, but I think that would have a pretty small impact on the distribution of available cards with this.

Not for nothing but in addition to the bazaar math this card can also get you closer to the single dredge 6 the list still has, which is another value to consider.

@protoaddict or quicker to a dredge 5, yes. it also makes hollow one more common, depending whether you'd pick it over a dredger or not.

I like this card more in a redundant creature/hatebear deck with elvish reclaimer because you could find lock pieces or something like cavern on turn 1 for free. That seems huge in a deck like that at fixing the first couple turns while not being dead as a top deck on turn 7. Basically you get to have 7 cards out of the top 12 instead of the normal 7 out of 7. Seems great to me.

-Storm

@stormanimagus

Dredge can be built with Depths and Reclaimers pretty easily. It’s more typically similar to a post board configuration of one of Adam’s lists.

Fair, but I think this is more of a game changer for a deck like hatebears/GW Humans because it gives a deck that previously had no early game fixing access to it. Dredge isn't struggling for a draw engine the way dudesmatter.dec is.

Yes, getting a draw spell that’s similar to preordain, but doesn’t cost early mana is nice for all of these Bazaar + Hate Bear decks since 1-drop is pretty devoted to either Bazaar or a Deathrite.

@vaughnbros you're forgetting 3-4 Deafening Silence. That's another new 1-drop I run.

In regards to dredge decks. Is it safe to assume that you can take out Dredgers and put in some Once Upon a Time in place of those dredgers since it will find dredgers or and additional Bazaar of Baghdad? If so maybe 4x Shambling Shell, 1x Golgari Grave-Troll and 2-3 Once Upon a Time (maybe Hogaak too) may be enough to bring back Force of Vigor back to the Main Deck from the Side Board.

@daniel-worobec I can't imagine playing a card like this as a 2-3x. it's like leylines.

Do you know how many people I see in other formats playing 2-3 Leylines, it's mind numbing.

@blindtherapy
I’m not sure that’s accurate. In Dredge, certainly, but in Survival? 2 might be the right number.

@daniel-worobec said in [ELD] Once Upon a Time:

In regards to dredge decks. Is it safe to assume that you can take out Dredgers and put in some Once Upon a Time in place of those dredgers since it will find dredgers or and additional Bazaar of Baghdad?

You are not casting them with mana, so unless you open with one after a bazaar they are just pitch fodder, unless riftstone portal falls in to favor in a big way.

I suspect the only time you take a dredger with these is actually when you whiff on finding another bazaar, so no I do not think you can cut dredgers in any substantial number to accommodate this as a matter of fact you likely want to keep the count high enough to ensure you hit one if you whiff on bazzar in the first place.

4 is the correct number in almost every deck that wants them. This is actually better in multiples than leylines since it’s actual mana cost is only 2.