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Showing posts from May, 2019

I Forced a Bot to Play 40,000 Games of Mono Red - The EV of Experimental Frenzy

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Experimental Frenzy is a beautifully complex magic card. Since it's printing in GRN it has found a solid home in standard Mono Red decks, and has even made its way into modern affinity, most notably in the hands of Matt Sperling at MC London . Throughout its time in standard, however, it's never quite been the agreed upon best draw engine for Mono Red. Printed in the same set as Risk Factor, and now facing a new challenger in Chandra, Fire Artisan from WAR, Frenzy is constantly having to fight for inclusion in the 75s of red mages. As someone who wants to play these decks and make reasonable decisions derived from sound logic, I have found choosing between these options rather difficult. The main problem with trying to make this choice is that Frenzy in particular is an incredibly random card with a terrible fail state (you find Mountain Mountain on top),  and just about the highest ceiling possible from a draw engine (see this clip ). Not being able to effectively measure th