Doomsday after the Probe Ban

The banning of Gitaxian Probe was brutal. I can't think of another word to describe it. For other Storm decks, Probe was simply a powerful card, too good not to play. For Doomsday, it was integral to the function of the deck. Beyond providing information and a cantrip, it was critical in many piles. Without it, most piles cost at least 1 mana more, or generate 1 less Storm if, for example, you use an on-board Bauble to draw into your pile. This may not seem devastating to the casual reader, but the deck is mana-hungry and often generating exactly 10 Storm, so it's certainly more of a problem than it may appear at first glance.

After a brief period of mourning, myself and a handful of other Doomsday players got down to the business of seeing if the deck was even remotely playable. There seemed to be 2 schools of thought: try to replace Probe with something like more Conjurer's Baubles or Street Wraiths, or consider taking the deck in a completely different direction. I was in favor of the latter and took inspiration from old Fetchland Tendrils lists circa 2010-ish. Most of these lists looked a lot like ANT and played maybe a singleton Doomsday as an additional engine. The first list I started playing post-ban that felt functional looked like this:

It's essentially an ANT deck with a pair of Doomsdays jammed in and a couple cards to support them, namely Infernal Contract (which turned out to be great on its own) and a singleton Conjurer's Bauble (to enable IT into DD lines). The idea here is that I can win games off the power of Past in Flames as my Plan A, and Doomsday can function more like a Plan B, providing relatively low-resource deterministic kills that can ignore grave hate instead of relying on shitty Ad Nauseam mana hungry tutor chains. After sideboarding it can lean into Doomsday a bit more, including bringing in the Shelldock/Emrakul package which is good against control decks and serviceable against decks like Show and Tell and Eldrazi Post. Note that it doesn't play Laboratory Maniac anywhere in the 75. The pass-the-turn piles are awkward with Infernal Contract and PiF helps you muscle through discard so Laboratory Maniac got the boot.

The other deck list should be more familiar-looking to people who have played Doomsday in the past:

This is "traditional" list with a couple Street Wraith instead of Probes. Wraith probably isn't good enough to play the full 4 but having the free draw is helpful, especially in pass-the-turn piles. The other notable feature of this list is Act on Impulse and Ideas Unbound in the main. This was suggested by someone in the Doomsday Discord as an alternative to maindeck Tendrils and either AoI or IU. Each of these cards works better in certain types of piles and if you're going to have 3 "dead" cards in the main, I find that the pile flexibility of having AoI and IU is an improvement over some of the cheap high-storm tricks you can do with maindeck ToA and Bauble loops.

With that lengthy intro out of the way, I'll get down to the meat of the article. I played 30 matches which each of these lists, with minor variations as I worked on sideboards and some maindeck numbers. I realize that 30 matches is not enough to get real hard data but I think it's sufficient to see some trends and start getting an idea of how the 2 lists compare and whether or not Doomsday is even remotely playable without Probe. I kept detailed records of my matches for each list using the same spreadsheet format that we've used in the past data collection. I'll be comparing these lists and trying to gain some insight into their strengths and weaknesses.

Before I begin, some caveats about the data:

1. Combo Turn is tracked on a 1-5+ scale, meaning games that go longer than 5 turns are marked as 5.
2. When pass-the-turn piles are involved, the combo turn is listed as the turn Doomdsay was cast. Empty the Warrens is notated similarly.
3. Each deck was played against a random sampling of the format, in a combination of Leagues and Practice Room matches. This means that I didn't play against the same amounts of the same archetypes, and that there are a couple of "tier 3" type lists, like Parfait. I'll touch upon the archetype balance issue again later.

Now, to the data!

Overall Match Winrate

PiF DD: 53.33% (16/30)
BW DD: 53.33% (16/30)

Exactly the same. Not a lot to say here. I ran damn near 50/50 with both lists. That is far from spectacular, but 30 matches is not a lot, and it is decent enough that it doesn't make me want to give up on casting Doomsdays, especially considering that I was learning to play new lists and make new piles over the course of these 30 matches. Let's dive a bit deeper. I think there are some much more interesting stats we can look at.

Game Win Percentages

Overall

PiF DD: 56.75%
BW DD: 52.17%

The PiF version did a bit better in this category, suggesting it had a few more 2-0 wins and 1-2 losses.

Winrate by Game

Frankly I'm not sure what to make of this. The PiF version had a substantially higher G1 and G2 winrate than the BW list, but it drops off precipitously in G3 whereas the BW list actually gains substantially in G3. This is unexpected, and is probably in part a function of the small dataset. It could also be attributed to a better sideboard for the BW variant, but considering the space the wishboard takes up and the fact that key interactive cards are shared by both lists I'm not sure that adequately explains things.

Mulls and Combo Turn

Average Mulligan
PiF DD: 6.64
BW DD: 6.62

Average Combo Turn
PiF DD: 3.75
BW DD: 3.33

There doesn't seem to be a significant difference between how well the 2 lists mulligan. Both mulligan fairly well. The BW list is slightly faster than the PiF list. This is likely due to it having access to Empty the Warrens in Game 1 and not needing Threshold for Cabal Rituals.

Winrate vs. Mulligan and Die Roll

I wouldn't put too much stock in this, but it appears as if the PiF list is affected more by mulligans. The BW list has a lower winrate at 7 cards but isn't affected as much by going to 6. There weren't enough games where I mulled to 5 to get reasonable data, but I managed to win one with the PiF list.

Winrate vs. Die Roll

Another surprise. The PiF list seems to fare much better on the draw, whereas the BW list is the opposite. It's worth noting that both lists had the exact same die roll Win% at 46.67%. In a small sample size this has the potential to be strongly affected by what decks I happened to win or lose the roll against but it certainly caught my eye and gives me some food for thought.

Winrates vs. Archetypes and Disruption Categories

Rather than just drop a bunch of raw data here I'll just point out some parts that I found noteworthy.

Against decks with Countermagic as their primary and only form of significant disruption against us (this includes decks like Miracles, UW Stoneblade, and also RUG delver and High Tide) the PiF DD list performed better, going 50% against these decks. The BW DD list won just 30% of these matches. The BW list seems weaker vs RUG Delver due to a shakier manabase and being worse against Stifle. However the BW list also played against a few more brew-ish lists in this category, including High Tide and a UR Control list so I'm wary of reading too much into this result.

The BW DD list seems better vs. Hatebear decks like DnT and Maverick and I attribute this mostly to its ability to Burning Wish for Massacre and ignore graveyard hate and Gaddock Teeg. The PiF list won just 1 of 4 matches against DnT, but I think this issue can be mitigated with a more focused sideboard and better play since I have very little experience in the ANT vs DnT matchup.

Finally, I'd like to discuss a bit of archetype skew in my results. In particular, with the BW DD list I played against a wide swath of the format, whereas with my PiF DD list I played against a lot more fast blue combo decks, like Show and Tell and UB Reanimator. These are both tough matchups and I lost every single one. In a small sample size this can affect my overall win rate significantly. If I ignore my disastrous matchups against these 2 decks, I achieved a 64% winrate against the rest of the format which is quite respectable. Obviously I shouldn't just ignore these decks but it suggests that the deck could perform well if I have a good plan for them.

Conclusion

I don't want to draw too many conclusions from this data as the sample size is quite small so it must be taken with a grain of salt. I'm more interested in generating some discussion. I think the BW DD list provides better game 1 flexibility and speed. The PiF DD list is smoother and more stable. And for anyone who is thinking "Shouldn't you just play ANT if you're basically doing it already?" it's a valid question but I like casting Doomsday and having it in the deck got me out of a few situations I wouldn't have been able to get out of otherwise. Like many deckbuilding decisions, it comes at a cost, which in this case is the lack of some fast lines into ETW and Ad Nauseam. To anyone thinking "Is the PiF list reeaally a Doomsday deck, or just ANT with some jank you occasionally get to cast?" I did keep track of how I won my games and I won about 30% of my games with Doomsday (this includes when I lean into it more postboard with the Shelldock plan). If I had to pick one to take to a tournament right now I'd probably lean towards the PiF list, mostly due to the stability of the manabase. Anyway, I encourage anyone interested in trying to keep Doomsday alive to try both these lists. I think they both have some potential. And if these fail there's the always classic Rev614 Show and Tell/Doomsday hybrid.

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