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The original was posted on /r/modernmagic by /u/Mugiwara_Khakis on 2023-10-03 18:32:52.

So I borrowed a friend’s Bogles deck to play in a Modern event Sunday to play test for him. I went 3-0(vs. Murktide, Scales, and an enchantress combo deck), but I noticed a glaring weakness in the deck. He’s playing Sunpetal Groves over Razorverge Thickets. When he asked me how it went I told him I won out, but the Sunpetal Groves were kind of awkward and in a game against the enchantment deck having Sunpetal Grove instead of Razorverge Thicket actually cost me the game because I had already mulled to five looking for a Bogle and my only two mana sources were Grove and Horizon Canopy. It put me a turn behind double enchanting the Bogle which let the enchantment combo deck have an extra turn to win.

I bring this up to him and tell him that the Sunpetal Groves should probably be Razorverge Thickets, to prevent what happened, but he assures me that mathematically, the Sunpetal Groves are better than Razorverge Thickets (he did some hyper geometric calculations and said the Groves come in untapped something like 83% of the time where as Thickets only come in untapped a little lower than 50%, he also has a math degree so he takes calculations and stuff like that to heart).

I’m trying to explain to him that most of the time SURE the Sunpetal Groves will be fine, but there’s always the nonzero chances they won’t be, like against my enchantment opponent, where Thickets would make the deck much stronger. I tried to explain it to him that if he had the chance to make his first three land drops come in untapped 100% of the time, why wouldn’t he take it? The first three are all that really matter in a deck like Bogles anyway, so why even have the chance of potentially drawing an awkward mana base when swapping the Sunpetals to Thickets would eliminate that concern entirely? I just can’t get it through to him that these nonzero amount of times are a big enough concern for consistency.

Am I the one in the wrong for thinking the Thickets are almost just strictly better even if there’s a chance you don’t draw any in your opener?

Here’s what his mana (and the rest of the deck) looks like: