Worst/Best Fact or Fiction split ever? Your opinion needed!

Quetzilla · Joined: 29 May 2005 Posts: 58

So Eaglewolf and I were playing a round of fictional t2 (current season is 7E/Invasion block/Mirrodin block -- join #fictionalt2 for info). He was playing BW control with desolation angel, I was playing UG Crystal Shard/Eternal Witness control. At the end of his turn I cast Fact or Fiction with no extra mana revealing:

Forest
Eternal Witness
Temporal Spring
Mystic Snake
Fact or Fiction

The question is, how do you (in Eaglewolf's place) split those 5 cards? Quite a conundrum Cool

I am interested in people's feedback (I didn't post this just to brag about my deck =P) so please give your thoughts on how you would split those cards.

_Metallica_ · Joined: 20 Oct 2005 Posts: 92

it depends on the situation, i would spilt them:

Eternal Witness
Mystic Snake

Forest
Fact of Fiction
Temporal Spring

Quetzilla · Joined: 29 May 2005 Posts: 58

board position for the BW player was 4-5 lands and ravenous rats on the table vs 4 lands and nothing for UG

Haro · Joined: 01 Sep 2004 Posts: 244

Well depending on the graveyard, witness can be broken or.. even more broken. Its obvious you have to split the fof and eternal witness up. Putting eternal witness with mystic snake is bad too cause you give them so much card advantage cause they counter 1 thing, have a 2/2 beater then revive it again with a possibility of a 4 for 1 card advantage? I think the only way to do it is:
eternal witness, forest, temporal spring
fof, mystic snake

Shyft- · Joined: 06 Nov 2004 Posts: 101 Location: Your Mom

I'm going to disagree with Haro.

Obviously, your choices here are bad and worse, however giving fact and snake is simply too good, this leaves all the instants together and doesn't force your opponent to actually do anything on his turn. Also, it greatly depends on the quality of your hand. If you have a good hand with two spells you'd wish to try and force through, then it's fine to go with witness+snake vs fact+spring+forest, because snake has to die first for witness to retrieve it. If you have one or zero spells to try and get through, you're clearly in trouble, but the plan at that point is to value fact lower and hope your opponent "misses" on his next 1-2 facts. Then, the split is fact+witness vs the remainder, because in this situation temporal spring is just as bad as a time walk, putting you one turn away from the topdecks you'll need to try and come back.

So those imo are the 2 possible splits depending on your hand

witness + snake
vs.
fact + spring + forest

or

witness + fact
vs.
spring + snake + forest

The other important thing is not to put witness with a land. You want to lower the probability that your opponent can, within the next couple of turns, safely play witness with backup.

WildCard · Joined: 06 Sep 2004 Posts: 735 Location: Japan

heh. thats not a truly horrible FoF. try one where the opponent cannot win.. casts FoF and no matter what way you split it you lose. or 3 or 4 card draw spells... the way one person told me to do it one time (which works on non-skilled people only) put all the cards they NEED in one pile and the others in the second pile. will either look like 1-4 or 2-3, .... well.. with the smaller pile being the one they should pick. i dont have the exact situation... i can look up my logs of the last FoF and edit this post later.

Quetzilla · Joined: 29 May 2005 Posts: 58

Well I was clearly exaggerating with Best/Worst, but I think the interplay between witness/snake/temporal spring/and fact or fiction makes it terribly terribly tricky to figure out exactly what your opponent would end up getting regardless of what you gave them. And this was an actual real split, not a contrived scenario Smile

Master_Shake · Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 2

[sarcasm] In any instance where the other player is holding 6 cards after casting Fact or Fiction, the correct choice is 5-0. This tactic not only shifts the stress from you to the other player, but also maximizes the power of your Megrim. Forcing the other player to discard 5 cards single-handedly halfs their life total, while not takin away from future discard oppertunities. In this istance, there is also no better way to make Eternal Witness weak other than allowing for only 1 target: Fact or Fiction. When they play FoF again and you split if 5-0 again, you can easily expect them to take 0 to avoid losing to Megrim.[/sarcasm]

While it is very important to know what is in your yard, and what lands you have, I think I would split it likes this:

Temporal Spring
Fact or Fiction
Forest

Eternal Witness
Mystic Snake

If you only have one green source, this is the best possible split. By my count, the Fof side allows for total card advantage of 4, while the Eternal Witness side will allow for is 5

0 - 1 (This FoF) + 3 (the FoF side) = 2

2 - 0 (playing Forest, assuming you do not Spring the Rats, as that will lose you another card.) -1 for the 2nd FoF +3 for the (2nd FoF) = 4

TC = 4

As opposed to

0 - 1 Fof + 2 (Eternal Witness and Mystic Snake) = 1

1 - 0 (Eternal Witness) +1 (Bringing back FoF) - 0 (Mystic Snake entering play) +1 (mystic Snake countering a spell) = 3

3 -1 (2nd FoF) +3 (2nd Fof) = 5

TC = 5 (Mystic Snake being on the table renders Ravenous Rats as dead +1. Therotical Card Advantage = 6)

The FoF side will actually allow for less card advantage, but the card advantage it does create will be much more tempo concious, it will also cause you to lose more life.

The Eternal Witness side is much slower, as you cannot play Mystic Snake and any other spell (that it looks like you are using) in the same turn, even with another land drop or two. While this choice allows for tremendous card advantage, it may not be the best choice unless you can rev up to seven lands in the next three turns.

Void06 · Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 179

the split should be FOF, Witness Vs. Spring, Snake, Forest.

In one pile you have enormous card advantage the other you have really powerful tempo advantage. This way whichever pile he takes you can generally shift the manner in which you play to work against whatever FoF pile he took, rather than pile of good spells vs. other good spells

AlexTrebek · Joined: 24 Nov 2004 Posts: 140

Here's my humble opinion on why the split has to be

Witness/Snake/Forest vs. Spring/FoF

unless your opponent only has one forest in play then move the land to the other side.

In Eagle's position, you can't put the spring or FoF with the witness. Before the flip your opponent is guaranteed to be able to play another FoF and giving him the ability to play two in the next three turns will end the game quickly. The Forest needs to be on the side you want your opponent to take and in this situation you'd rather have your opponent have to tap down to put down a witness as Eagle's deck has disruption and creature kill. If the witness is played next turn, Eagle can safely play a duress to get the FoF or Spring out of his hand. If Eagle lets you take the FoF without playing witness, he has no shot getting it with duress and allows you to draw 3 cards in response to it.

Of course if only one of the four lands in pay can produce green, you can't hand an opponent the ability to play the witness but the 2nd FoF is probably going to lead to a forest anyway.

Kholdstare · Joined: 30 Apr 2005 Posts: 49

honestly i close my eyes and split them. but i would go with forest/snake/witness VS fact or fiction /spring

i dont know why...but thats what id do.

what makes this reall bad is obviously the wtiness can get any card he gets rid of...and if hes desperate he can get access to all 5 of those cards my springing is witness....but thats pretty desperate...and bad