Deck analysis

60 cards, 23 lands, 37 spells, average mana value 2.65

Analysed 03 Sep 2026, 14:07

Cards
60
Lands
23
Spells
37
Average mana value
2.65
Sideboard*
15

* Sideboard cards are resolved and listed, never counted. Every probability on this page is drawn from the 60 maindeck cards alone, since that is the library you shuffle for game one.

Deck analysis

The header figures for the maindeck. The sideboard is parsed so its cards resolve, but it is never analysed: sideboard cards do not affect a land count or a source count.

What each figure is

  • Cards — maindeck cards, counting copies. A legal Constructed deck reads 60 here; anything else means the export was trimmed or the format is not the one this tool models.
  • Lands — cards whose front face type line contains "Land". A modal double-faced card with a land back counts as a spell here, which is what Karsten's regression expects: it has its own term for those.
  • Spells — everything else.
  • Average mana value — the total mana value of the spells divided by the number of spells. Lands are excluded, which matters: including them would drag the average toward zero and cost you two or three lands in the recommendation.

Using it

The share link is the whole analysis: anyone who opens it recomputes the same numbers from the same decklist. Save as PDF prints through the browser, and every collapsed section is opened first so nothing is missing from the file.

Maindeck and sideboard

60 maindeck, 15 sideboard

The export declared its own sections. Move a copy across if it is still wrong; the analysis is rebuilt each time.

Maindeck (60)

  • 4× Steam Vents
  • 3× Spirebluff Canal
  • 3× Hallowed Fountain
  • 4× Great Hall of the Biblioplex
  • 2× Island
  • 1× Mistrise Village
  • 1× Mountain
  • 2× Sundown Pass
  • 3× Riverpyre Verge
  • 4× Exhibition Tidecaller
  • 4× Firebending Lesson
  • 1× Soul-Guide Lantern
  • 1× Three Steps Ahead
  • 2× Abandon Attachments
  • 4× Accumulate Wisdom
  • 4× Combustion Technique
  • 1× Iroh's Demonstration
  • 2× It'll Quench Ya!
  • 3× Stock Up
  • 4× Tablet of Discovery
  • 2× Space-Time Anomaly
  • 1× Ashling's Command
  • 4× Jeskai Revelation

Sideboard (15)

  • 1× Ghost Vacuum
  • 2× Spell Pierce
  • 2× Flashfreeze
  • 1× Disdainful Stroke
  • 3× Price of Freedom
  • 1× Return the Favor
  • 1× Riverchurn Monument
  • 2× Day of Judgment
  • 2× Emeritus of Ideation // Ancestral Recall

Maindeck and sideboard

Which cards are the deck and which are the sideboard. Everything else on this page is computed from the maindeck alone, so a card on the wrong side is wrong everywhere: it changes the deck size every probability divides by, the average mana value, and every source count.

How the split is found

  • Declared — the export carries a Deck or Sideboard header and says so itself. Nothing is guessed.
  • Guessed — there is no header and the list holds more than 60 cards, so it is a deck and its sideboard run together. Exports written this way separate the two with a blank line, and that blank line is taken as the split.
  • Unresolved — more than 60 cards, no header and no blank line. There is nothing to read the split off, so every card is treated as maindeck and the numbers above are those of an oversized deck until you move the sideboard out.

Correcting it

Each arrow moves one copy. A card can sit on both sides — a fourth copy in the sideboard is ordinary — which is why copies move one at a time rather than the whole card at once.

Moving a copy writes the Deck and Sideboard headers into the stored decklist, so the split is settled from then on and everyone opening the link sees the same one. The cards themselves are never changed.

Mana sources

9 lands, 1 needing you to confirm what they produce

Scryfall cannot settle what these lands are worth here. Cavern of Souls lists every colour but only pays for creature spells; a land whose type is chosen as it enters lists none at all. Confirm what each one is really a source of in this deck.

LandWUBRG
4× Great Hall of the Biblioplex {T}: Add {C}. {T}, Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color. Spend this mana only to cast an instant or sorcery...
Other lands (8)
LandWUBRG
3× Hallowed Fountain
2× Island
1× Mistrise Village
1× Mountain
3× Riverpyre Verge
3× Spirebluff Canal
4× Steam Vents
2× Sundown Pass

Mana sources

Which colours each land counts for. Every colour figure elsewhere on the page is built from what is settled here, so a wrong answer here is wrong everywhere.

How a land is counted

  • A land producing colour C is a source of C.
  • A nonland with mana value 2 or less that produces C is also a source of C. It is listed separately, because it dies to removal and a land does not.
  • A fetchland is a source of every colour it can actually find among the lands in this deck — fetching a Mountain is worth nothing if the deck runs none.
  • A land producing only colourless is a source of no colour. It still counts toward the land total and still pays generic costs.
  • A land that always enters tapped still counts, but raises a warning against turn 1 and turn 2 spells, where the delay is the whole problem. A tapped clause with a condition — shocklands, fastlands, checklands — does not count as slow.

Why some lands ask

A land is highlighted when Scryfall's data cannot settle it:

  • Scryfall reports no mana for it at all, because its type is chosen as it enters.
  • It produces three or more colours, which usually means a restriction the card text carries and the data does not.
  • Its text says the mana may be spent only on certain spells — Cavern of Souls lists five colours but pays only for creature spells.

Using it

Tick the colours the land is really worth in this deck, then save. The answer is stored against this deck alone, since what Cavern of Souls is worth depends on the creature types around it. Every other land sits in the collapsed list and can be corrected too. Reset to detected throws away every confirmation and goes back to what Scryfall says.

There is no way to say "this land counts for creature spells only". If a restricted land does not really support the deck, untick its colours.

Land count

24 recommended, 23 played

Karsten’s regression recommends 24 lands (20.8–26.3, one RMSE either side). This deck plays 23.

1 fewer than recommended.

These counts come from oracle-text heuristics. Correct them and the recommendation updates.

Land count

How many lands the deck should run, from Frank Karsten's regression over roughly 95,000 tournament decks (R² = 0.395, RMSE = 2.75).

lands = 19.59 + 1.90 × average mana value − 0.28 × (ramp + cheap draw) − 1.00 × fast mana − 0.74 × MDFC untapped − 0.38 × MDFC tapped + 0.27 × companion

What each term is

  • Average mana value — across spells only, lands excluded.
  • Ramp — nonlands with mana value 2 or less that produce mana, once or repeatedly, or that make a land produce more.
  • Cheap draw — nonlands with mana value 2 or less that draw a card or move one from your library to your hand.
  • Fast mana — nonlands costing 0 that produce mana repeatedly at no further cost.
  • MDFC untapped / tapped — modal double-faced cards whose land face can enter untapped, and those whose land face always enters tapped. They are spells that double as lands, so they lower the count you need without being counted as lands.
  • Companion — one if the export carries a companion.

The range, and why it matters

The bracketed range is one root-mean-square error either side. The model explains under 40% of the variance across real decks, so it is a starting point, not a verdict. Landing inside the range means the deck is unremarkable in this respect; landing well outside it is worth a reason.

Using it

The four counts are read off oracle text by pattern matching, and pattern matching gets cards wrong. Each field lists what it matched. Correct a number and press Recalculate; your figure replaces the detected one in the formula.

On the play does not enter this formula. It changes the probabilities in the sections below, where the number of cards you have seen matters.

Colored sources

U, R, R/U, W, and every spell against its Karsten target

Karsten’s targets hit about 90% consistency on curve. The probability column is this deck’s real hypergeometric chance.

ColorSourcesHardest requirementVerdict
U 20 14 good
R 17 14 good
R/U 23 13 good
W 9 11 close

By spell

SpellTurnRequirementSources Karsten targetProbability
4× Exhibition Tidecaller 1 U 20 14 95.2%
4× Firebending Lesson 1 R 17 14 91.7%
1× Three Steps Ahead 1 U 20 14 95.2%
2× Abandon Attachments 2 R/U 23 13 98.5%
4× Accumulate Wisdom 2 U 20 13 97.0%
4× Combustion Technique 2 R 17 13 94.3%
1× Iroh's Demonstration 2 R 17 13 94.3%
2× It'll Quench Ya! 2 U 20 13 97.0%
3× Stock Up 3 U 20 12 98.2%
4× Tablet of Discovery 3 R 17 12 96.2%
2× Space-Time Anomaly 4 W 9 11 83.1%
U 20 11 98.9%
Space-Time Anomaly: both colours in the same hand 82.6%
1× Ashling's Command 5 U 20 10 99.3%
R 17 10 98.3%
Ashling's Command: both colours in the same hand 97.9%
4× Jeskai Revelation 7 U 20 8 99.8%
R 17 8 99.3%
W 9 8 90.8%
Jeskai Revelation: both colours in the same hand 90.2%

Colored sources

Whether the deck can actually cast its spells on curve, colour by colour. The land count answers how many lands; this answers which ones.

The targets

Karsten's table gives the minimum sources needed to cast a spell on curve about 90% of the time in a 60-card deck:

pips T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10 1 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 8 7 7 2 - 20 18 16 15 14 13 12 11 11 3 - - 23 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

These come from his simulations, which include London mulligan decisions, so they sit about two sources below what a plain hypergeometric calculation would demand. That is why the target is data here rather than something recomputed.

What each column is

  • Turn — the spell's mana value, which is the turn you would cast it on curve. Anything above 10 uses the turn 10 row.
  • Requirement — the coloured pips of the cost. A hybrid pip is one symbol satisfied by either colour, and its sources are the union of both. A Phyrexian pip is not required at all, since life pays for it. Generic mana is never counted: any land pays that.
  • Sources — what the deck actually has, by the rules in Mana sources.
  • Karsten target — the table figure above.
  • Probability — this deck's real chance, not the table's: the hypergeometric probability of holding at least that many sources among the 7 + turn − 1 cards seen by then on the play. It is lower than 90% at the target because it does not model mulligans, so read it as a relative measure, not an absolute one.

Spells of more than one colour

A gold spell is cast with every colour it asks for or not at all, so the row per colour is not the chance of casting it. Under those rows sits the chance of holding all of them in the same hand, which is always the lower number and is the one that says whether the spell is castable on curve.

It is not the single-colour figures multiplied together. The colours are not independent of each other: a dual land answers both at once and lifts the combined chance, while every card drawn towards one colour is a card not drawn towards the other and lowers it. The hand is counted directly instead, with each land counted once however many of the spell's colours it makes.

Karsten's table has no figure to compare this against — it gives a target per colour requirement, not per spell — so the combined row carries no verdict. Meet each colour's target and read the combined number as what the deck actually does.

The verdicts

  • good — at or above the target.
  • close — one or two sources short.
  • poor — three or more short. Either add sources or cut the spell.

The colour summary at the top keeps each colour's hardest requirement, so a colour reads "good" only if its most demanding spell is satisfied. A warning under a spell means some of its sources always enter tapped, which the table's figures do not account for on turns 1 and 2.

Card types

4 creatures, 9 permanents, 28 instants and sorceries

TypeCardsShare of deck
Lands23 38.3%
Instants22 36.7%
Sorceries6 10.0%
Artifacts5 8.3%
Creatures4 6.7%

Opening odds

Seven cards, on the play, no mulligan.

GroupCardsNone in handAt least one At least twoOne by turn 3
Creatures 4 60.1% 39.9% 6.3% 48.8%
Permanents 9 30.0% 70.0% 28.1% 79.4%
Instants and sorceries 28 0.9% 99.1% 92.6% 99.8%
Lands 23 2.7% 97.3% 83.5% 99.2%

Card types

What the deck is made of, and how often each part shows up. The curve says when you can act; this says with what.

Composition

Every maindeck card counted once, copies included. A card with several types is counted under its most characteristic one, so an artifact creature is a creature and never both: counting it twice would make the shares add to more than the deck.

Only the front face is read. A modal double-faced card with a land back is counted as the spell it is cast as, which is the same choice the land count makes.

Opening odds

For the groups worth opening on, the hypergeometric chance of holding that many in a seven-card hand, and of having seen at least one by turn 3 on the play. No mulligan is modelled, so a real hand is a little better than the "none" column suggests -- you would throw the worst of them back.

  • Creatures — cards typed Creature, artifact creatures included.
  • Permanents — nonland cards that stay on the battlefield: creatures, artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers, battles.
  • Instants and sorceries — the rest of the spells.
  • Lands — the same count the land section works from. The "none" column here is the chance of a hand you would have to mulligan.

Reading it

The figure to watch is the none column for whatever the deck needs to function. An aggressive deck that opens without a creature roughly a quarter of the time is a deck that loses those games to its own composition, not to variance it can play around. A control deck can afford it; a creature deck cannot.

Karsten's articles do not prescribe a split between types the way they prescribe lands and sources. This section is the same maths applied to the question, not a rule from him: treat the percentages as facts about the deck and the thresholds as your own.

Mana curve

Histogram, and the 28.2% of games that play a one-, two- and three-drop on curve

10113273241547+

Curving out — a one-drop on turn 1, a two-drop on turn 2 and a three-drop on turn 3 — happens in 28.2% of games (10000 simulated games, London mulligan).

TurnPlayed a spell on curve
171.1%
285.3%
355.0%

Mana curve

Whether the deck can actually use its early turns. A curve that looks fine as a histogram can still fail in play if the land count cannot support it.

The histogram

One bar per mana value, counting copies, spells only. Mana value 7 and above share the last bar, since the distinction stops mattering there.

Curving out

The share of games that play a one-drop on turn 1, a two-drop on turn 2 and a three-drop on turn 3. There is no closed form for this — it depends on draws and on land drops at once — so it is estimated by simulating 10,000 games.

What the simulation does each game:

  • Shuffles the deck as lands and spells grouped by mana value.
  • Draws seven and keeps the first hand holding between two and five lands, taking at most two mulligans. On a mulligan it bottoms one card per mulligan taken, dropping the most expensive spells first.
  • Plays a land every turn if it holds one, then casts a spell of that turn's cost if it has enough lands in play.

The seed is fixed, so the same deck always reports the same number: a change you see is a change you made, not simulation noise. The per-turn table below breaks the same simulation down — the share of games that made each individual drop, which is always at least as high as making all three.

Reading it

A low figure with a healthy curve usually means too few lands, or too many that enter tapped. A deck with no spell at one of those costs cannot curve out at all, and the page says so rather than reporting a bare 0%.

How many copies to play

Chance of having seen a card by each number of cards seen, for one to four copies

Chance of having seen at least one copy by the time you have seen that many cards, on the play.

Cards seen 7T1 8T2 9T3 10T4 11T5 12T6 13T7 14T8 15T9 16T10
1 11.7%13.3%15.0%16.7%18.3%20.0%21.7%23.3%25.0%26.7%
2 22.1%25.1%28.0%30.8%33.6%36.3%38.9%41.5%44.1%46.6%
3 31.5%35.4%39.1%42.7%46.2%49.5%52.6%55.6%58.5%61.3%
4 39.9%44.5%48.8%52.8%56.6%60.1%63.4%66.5%69.4%72.2%

How many copies to play

How often a card shows up, by copy count. The answer to "is three enough?" and to "is the 61st card free?".

The maths

Each cell is the hypergeometric probability of having seen at least one copy once you have seen that many cards, drawing without replacement:

P(X ≥ 1) = 1 − C(N − K, n) / C(N, n)

with N the deck size, K the number of copies, and n the cards seen. Cards seen heads each column because it is what the formula takes: seven is the opening hand, and each turn after adds a draw. The turn that reaches a column is the smaller line under its number, and it shifts by one on the draw — the same fifteen cards arrive a turn earlier. On the play in the land section moves it.

Reading it

The jump from one copy to two is much larger than the jump from three to four: copies have diminishing returns, which is why a four-of is not automatically right. Compare a row against how deep into the game you actually need the card — a four-of you want in the opening seven is a different question from a four-of you want by the fifteenth card.

This table is not conditioned on mulligans, unlike the coloured source targets. It is the raw draw probability.

Why 60 cards

Every figure here scales with deck size. Open the hypergeometric calculator, set the deck size to 61 and compare: the extra card lowers the chance of drawing your best cards, and nothing in the deck gets better to compensate.

Ignored

1 sideboard card that did not resolve

These sideboard cards did not resolve. The sideboard is not analysed, so they do not affect anything above.

  • Emeritus of Ideation // Ancestral Recall

Ignored

Sideboard cards that Scryfall could not match by set and collector number, and could not match by name either.

They do not block anything, because the sideboard is not analysed: it contributes to no land count and to no source count. They are listed so a typo is visible rather than silent.

A maindeck card that fails to resolve is different — that one holds the whole analysis back and asks you to confirm which card it is, since dropping it would change the average mana value and every source count.

Decklist

The Arena export this analysis was built from

Deck
4 Steam Vents
3 Spirebluff Canal
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Great Hall of the Biblioplex
2 Island
1 Mistrise Village
1 Mountain
2 Sundown Pass
3 Riverpyre Verge
4 Exhibition Tidecaller
4 Firebending Lesson
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Three Steps Ahead
2 Abandon Attachments
4 Accumulate Wisdom
4 Combustion Technique
1 Iroh's Demonstration
2 It'll Quench Ya!
3 Stock Up
4 Tablet of Discovery
2 Space-Time Anomaly
1 Ashling's Command
4 Jeskai Revelation

Sideboard
1 Ghost Vacuum
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flashfreeze
1 Disdainful Stroke
3 Price of Freedom
1 Return the Favor
1 Riverchurn Monument
2 Day of Judgment
2 Emeritus of Ideation // Ancestral Recall

Decklist

The Arena export exactly as it was pasted. The analysis is recomputed from this text every time the page loads, so the two can never drift apart.

Only the Deck section is analysed. Sideboard cards are resolved but excluded from every calculation, a Companion sets the companion term in the land formula, and the name in the About block is what labels this deck in the recent analyses list.

To change the deck, paste the new list as a fresh analysis. An analysis is a record of one decklist at one moment, so its cards are never edited in place. Moving a copy between the maindeck and the sideboard is the one thing that rewrites this text: it adds the headers the export left out, and which cards are the deck is part of reading a list rather than a change to it.