(or, how fucking complicated is Magic, eh?)
In this article I will answer the question of what the average damage [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] is expected to do is, and all that fun stuff. I'm also going to talk about other stuff that is more interesting about the card than just the average damage.
Suppose that an opponent started the game with 40 cards including 17 lands. By the time we're swinging with [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] we're looking at, at most, 28 cards in his deck and probably around 12 lands remaining (on average he'll draw 5.1 lands in the first 12 cards).
So we swing. Here's what happens:
In this article I will answer the question of what the average damage [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] is expected to do is, and all that fun stuff. I'm also going to talk about other stuff that is more interesting about the card than just the average damage.
Suppose that an opponent started the game with 40 cards including 17 lands. By the time we're swinging with [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] we're looking at, at most, 28 cards in his deck and probably around 12 lands remaining (on average he'll draw 5.1 lands in the first 12 cards).
So we swing. Here's what happens:
I've made a spreadsheet which you can download from Google docs and see all the data for any number of cards in deck and lands in deck between 0 and 60 just by editing those two numbers. It shows the expected number of cards milled, the probability of each number of cards milled, the number of spells that will be left in the deck. You can find the spreadsheet here. If it doesn't play well with your own excel software you can always upload it into google docs again on your own google docs account and play with it there.
The thing that I think is most important about this card (which I don't consider exciting or even terribly playable) is that it's variable. Because of this it's hard to simply analyze it using its average effect. If your opponent is on seven life and you have [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] on a two power creature you need to know how often you activate for five or more, not what your average value on one activation is. Cards like this create a lot of variance in the game, but if you understand the odds you can use them to work out the best play, weighing, say, the chance of activating for five or more against the chance of topdecking one of three outs if you hold back to chump block. Once you know the numbers it's a simple math equation.
The coolest thing? [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] is pretty awful, but in a pinch you could use this spreadsheet for other cards with similar effects like [card]Spoils of the Vault[/card] and [card]Goblin Charbelcher[/card]. For example, with [card]Spoils of the Vault[/card] simply replace the number of lands in your deck with the number of the card you're searching for and you'll see all the possible numbers of cards you could reveal before finding it and how likely this will be. Enjoy!
The thing that I think is most important about this card (which I don't consider exciting or even terribly playable) is that it's variable. Because of this it's hard to simply analyze it using its average effect. If your opponent is on seven life and you have [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] on a two power creature you need to know how often you activate for five or more, not what your average value on one activation is. Cards like this create a lot of variance in the game, but if you understand the odds you can use them to work out the best play, weighing, say, the chance of activating for five or more against the chance of topdecking one of three outs if you hold back to chump block. Once you know the numbers it's a simple math equation.
The coolest thing? [card]Trepanation Blade[/card] is pretty awful, but in a pinch you could use this spreadsheet for other cards with similar effects like [card]Spoils of the Vault[/card] and [card]Goblin Charbelcher[/card]. For example, with [card]Spoils of the Vault[/card] simply replace the number of lands in your deck with the number of the card you're searching for and you'll see all the possible numbers of cards you could reveal before finding it and how likely this will be. Enjoy!
The spreadsheet:
Set up for a fairly standard [card]Spoils of the Vault[/card] situation:
PS Activating this card does not, on average, change the chance that your opponent will draw a land/non-land next turn at all.
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