@smmenen

Again, thats why you have two measurements. One is the unique decks, another is a measure of eveness. By using a measurement that is entagling them how are you determining whether the problem in a particular metagane is too few decks or not enough spread amoung decks?

@smmenen

Just not sure why you want a measurement that entangles two different ideas.

Richness seems pretty easily defined simply by the number of available archetypes, no?

So you'd have a Gini index for the inequality among the top decks, and a "richness" index that is just the number of unique archetypes.

As others have already said the GINI Index is what you want. There are a number of variations, but its a pretty well understood metric by econimists, and those studying inequalities alike.

Hermit Druid, Doomsday, Dredge are the 3 decks. So it depends on how you define best.

@rat3de

Your only way of producing red mana in this deck is to hurt yourself so I'm not sure about that. Creeping Chill is a build around card, imo, I think it might be out of place here. But if you like it then go for it.

@rat3de Yes. I don't think its an overly common situation where the 2 damage to a player is that relevant.

@rat3de

It taps for black mana, and is activated with black mana.

@blindtherapy

To elaborate more on that, there is a limit to how good your game 1 % can even be. You are never really going to overcome the Mulligan to oblivion %'s. You also need to win at least one game 2/3 in every match. You don't actually even need to win game 1 (which is something that other decks use to take advantage of Dredge).

EDIT: Expanding a little bit more:
Where, x=game 1 win% and y=game 2/3 win% then to be favored we have:
x*(1-y)y+xy+(1-x)yy>.5
Which simplifies to: -2 x y^2 + 2 x y + y^2>0.5
If we take the formula from the bottom where 1/2 < x < 1, we get the following resulting table.

So no matter how good your game 1 win % is, you still need to get to above 30% in game 2/3 to be favored in the match.

@Rat3dE

Those seem like fine changes, but just something small is that I think you probably want Cabal Pit over Barbarian Rings, especially if you are sticking with Abrupt Decays.

@davidlemon

Yeah, I mean I've played ~1000 of matches with variants of this deck and I still find new lines of play and make errors. There are just so many decisions when you have the option to dredge back use-able cards and all the good flashback spells that I've tried over the years. If you've already gone through the effort of assembling the deck, I'd at least try tuning it to your preference.

You can probably cut a copy or two of Loam, but I wouldn't do that if your goal is to make Loam more reliable. You want as many copies of it as you can get if you are going to rely on it so I've been at 4 Loams for a couple of years now in most of my builds. The card doesn't actually take any real slots since its just competing with other dredgers. You can up the Dakmors and Portals by trimming some stuff like Chancellor, and Stinkweeds. That might not be the direction you want if you want to make it faster though.

Like I said, I don't think the deck is any slower because I don't think Bridge from Below helps with speed. It helps with resilience when you need to fight through counterspells, sphere, and other situations that are preventing you from comboing hard. Amalgam is the same speed as Ichorid so the creature count is overall the same, and the access to extra land drops makes up for the grind factor you lose with no Bridges. If you want to increase speed in a dredge deck, the only real route is Fatestichers, imo. Its the next best GY creature, other than Ghast and Narcomoeba, at coming out on turn 2. So playing through counterspells is the situations where it can be slower, this is roughly only 50% of match ups (since other people are on Shops/Dredge/Survival/Storm/other non-blue) and even in those match ups only about 50% of the time will they even have a counter for Return. So you are talking about 25% of the time that it might be slower. At the same time, I feel its faster in situations where Bridge from Below is unreliable, e.g. against a Ravager and the Dredge mirror, since this deck is already well prepared to play a game with no Bridge from Below. Based on meta %'s, I think that evens it out overall.

My current list:

I haven't been totally happy with it though so I've been tinkering with some of the numbers, and the sideboard.

@davidlemon

Its not an easy deck to play so I don't think you are going to get the full feel of the deck if you only played it once.

1. Loam is primarily for post board games, and dredging, but Dakmor+Rifstone means that Loam is always alive, even main deck. You can boost the number of Dakmors if you want to make sure you can loam game 1.
2. Bridge from Below doesn't really increase speed, it just increases resilience under special circumstances. So if you aren't getting turn 2 Griselbrand here, then I don't think you are getting turn 2 Griselbrand in most dredge builds. The only dredge builds that even semi-consistently do that are full turbo with Fatestitchers and that version usually struggles post board. Most Dredge decks are turn 3/4 decks, this holds for this one as well.
3. I disagree. The lack of reliance on Bridge from Below and lack of needing to win in combat improves the match up dramatically, but if you are looking for a "mirror breaker", its Failure to Comply. That blocks any opposing Dread Return, essentially time walking the game. Leyline is just not good against any non-mirror match. If you want to pick your deck based on the chance someone else will play a suboptimal list than so be it, but it seems like a poor choice if the goal is to win a tournament.
4. The deck is not designed to maximize game 1 win %. That is already a very easy win if you play the deck well. You need to maximize game 2/3 win %'s in my opinion. Tormod's Crypts are at an all time high, and Grudge is a must. I've since upped to 4.

@Rat3dE

If you have a decklist then I could make specific recommendations. Loam can usually replace some other dredgers, and rifstone can usually replace some other lands.