Specifically, I wanted to examine what sort of environment its none Cipher keyworded predecessor,
Windfall, flourised in and determine what kind of standrd environment Whispering madness needs to be
effective.
Windfall was a piece of the Academy Extended decks back during Combo Winter. Its win condition was a big stroke of genius that would deck an opponent. I have an old Academy list and, hopefully, it'll allow me to objectively break down the combo deck. This post will probably be elementary to anyone that is highly
skilled in Magic, but for someone like me who is just diving into principles of deck design, it could be
highly informative.
As far as I have always understood combo decks, it is about quickly assembling your pieces, finding your
win condition, and going off in one good turn. If Academy is exemplary of a combo deck, it needs to meet 3
goals:
It needs to be able to acquire its pieces as quickly as possible.
It needs to be able to protect its combo.
It needs to "go off"
What cards does Academy have to accomplish these goals?
| 4 Ancient Tomb |
| 3 City of Brass |
| 4 Tolarian Academy |
| 4 Tundra |
| 4 Volcanic Island |
| 3 Abeyance |
| 3 Intuition |
| 4 Lotus Petal |
| 4 Mana Vault |
| 3 Mind Over Matter |
| 4 Mox Diamond |
| 3 Power Sink |
| 2 Scroll Rack |
| 4 Stroke of Genius |
| 4 Time Spiral |
| 3 Voltaic Key |
| 4 Windfall |
To protect itself and its combo, Academy ran, maindeck, Abeyance and Power Sink. Both protect Academy's combo going off, and stops opposing combos happening on their opponent's turn. Power sink is a bit more powerful since it can be played on an opponent's turn and pretty much stop them for the round.
Academy runs 3 Abeyances and 3 Power Sinks. Chances of having either of these cards in the opening hand is 54% and most hands will likely have only 1 in hand. 40% of the time it'll have 1 card. There's a 12%
chance of having 2. There is a 2% chance of having more than 2 in the opening hand.
To acquire pieces of a combo Academy needs to be able to cycle through cards quickly. In the case of
Academy this means card draw and tutors. Academy has 3 tutors, Intuition. It has 6 forms of instant card
draw. 2 Scroll Racks acts as pseudo draw that can be activated for {1} after it has been cast. Stroke of
Genius is instant variable card draw, but it is also the win condition. The deck runs 8 sorcery speed card
drawers. 4 Time Spirals and 4 Windfalls. I'm going to count Scroll Rack as a 3CMC card draw spell only
because it costs {2} to put it on the batlefield, and {1} to use it the first time. Academy runs, total, 9
3CMC tutor/draw cards, 4 6CMC cards, and 4 XCMC cards.
In the opening hand, there's a 70% chance of having at least one 3CMC draw/tutor spell in hand. 42% of the time it is JUST 1 card, 22% of the time it is 2 cards, 5% of the time it is 3 cards, 1% of the time it is
more than 3 cards. Odds of having a second 3 CMC draw/tutor spell are greater than only having drawn just one by the 5 card drawn.
The odds of having Time Spiral in hand and the position you'd want to play it is unique. Academy needs
lots of mana generated to run its combo. To speed up the time it takes to "combo off", it runs a lot of
fast mana sources. Academy has 2 sources of fast mana just looking at lands, Ancient Tomb and Tolarian Academy. Ancient tomb only produces colorsless and Tolarian Academy is conditional.The odds of drawing either of these in your opening hand is 65%. These are not your only source of fast mana, though. If you happened to draw one of the 11 "fair' lands in the deck you still have 8 0CMC artifacts (lotus petal and mox diamond) and 4 1CMC artifacts (Mana Vault) to draw in your opening hand. Counting Lands and artifacts, the chances of not having any source of fast mana in the opening hand is 5%.
How much mana could you start producing around turn 1?
Ancient tomb and mana vault in your opening hand? 16% chance of having {4} turn one
With Lotus petal? 6% chance of having {4} and {1} of any color
Instead, with Mox diamond and another land in hand? 6% chance of having {4} and {1} of any color
More than 25% of the time you'll have {4} to play with on Turn 1!
But, we have LOTS of blue spells that beg to be played. So how often can we get {X} and {U} in our opening hand?
Tolarian Academy, Lotus Petal, Mana Vault {3U} 6%
Tolarian Academy, Mox Diamond, Land, Mana Vault {3UU} 6%
Tolarian Academy, Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, Land {UUUU} 6%
Tolarian Academy, Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, Land, Mana Vault {3UUUU} 2%
Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal {2U} 16%
Ancient Tomb, Mox Diamond, Land {2U} 15%
Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, Mana Vault {4U} 6%
Ancient Tomb, Mox Diamond, Land, Lotus Petal {2UU} 6%
Ancient Tomb, Mox Diamond, Land, Mana Vault {4U} 6%
Ancient Tomb, Mox Diamond, Land, Lotus Petal, Mana Vault {4UU} 2%
there is a 43% chance you'll be At LEAST casting {2U} turn 1!
Of course these percentages go up as the game progresses.
What does all this mean? Well you are looking at a combo deck that could cast the majority of its draw
spells as its turn 1 play. The conditional probability of being able to have access to 2U and a 3CMC draw
spell is aorund 30%. Most likely it'll be turn 2 it starts playing and using scroll rack, windfall, or
intuition. Time spiral should start being no problem to cast at turn 3, and is doable on turn 2. By the
way, the probability of havng a Time spiral in the first 12 cards drawn? 60%. 12 is a pretty arbitrary
number. I just guessed that it would be turn 3 on the play, so we drew 9 cards in hand, and played one of
the draw spells which would probably be about and extra 3 cards drawn over turns 1 and 2.
Academy is nuts. Now what does this all mean for Whispering Madness?
Academy decks had access to fast mana to get up to 2U by no later thn turn 2 and has a nearly 50% chance
of having the mana to cast windfall by turn 1. Standard now has a dearth of fast mana. So you won't ever
see any turn 1 whispering madnesses. At best it'll hit the board on turn 3.
The fact that Whispering Madness is a cipher spell is pretty irrelevant. You really don't want to keep
having that spell casted over the game. The situation you'd really like that is if you have enough cheap
spells in your deck to keep casting more spells than your opponent can over a turn, thus netting you card
advantage.Do you want to keep casting 1-2 mana spells on turn 5 just so your ciphered creature can keep getting you more cards to draw? Whispering Madness is a card you probably want to use one time, and maybe might need again 3 turns later. To make use of the cipher ability, you would need to run some sort of creature dependant deck, which is not what the old Academy decks were.
So, how do I see Whispering Madness being used? I could see it in use with a BUG deck. It would need cheap evasive creatures, or creatures with trample, and spells to play on the early turns. Probably a high
number of them. With ramping, a turn 3 Whispering Madness is possibe, but turn 4 is more likely to
happen. You, of course, want to cast cheap spells and have a high concentration of them in the early turns
so that you get card advantage after casting Whispering Madness. Hopefully +2 or more cards. Now, what
would this lead into? Your win condition's mostly. If you Cipher Whispering madness onto a creature, you can use its repeated use to just dig deep into your deck for lands to play on your turn, most likley never
skipping a land drop after that turn and play large spells afterwards. These large spells can take up fewer
spots in your deck since you'll be leaning on your 1 or more resolutions of Whispering Madness to dig you out of your cheap early game spells.
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