Brewer's Minute: Magical Christmas Land Math

Hey everyone! It's time for another Brewer's Minute! Last week during a live stream, someone sent me a Turn-0-win combo for Modern. Yes, that's right, you win the game before the game actually evens starts! All you need to make this happen is four copies of Chancellor of the Dross and two copies of Soul Spike, which allow you to reveal the four Chancellor of the Dross to drain for 12, and then pitch the four Chancellor of the Dross (two by two) to the Soul Spikes to drain for eight more, equaling exactly 20 damage on Turn 0!

When I first heard about the combo, it seemed like a perfect episode of Against the Odds. I mean, there isn't much that's cooler than winning on Turn 0. Then, I started wondering about just how many games it would take to actually get the perfect hand (of four Chancellors and two Soul Spikes). 100? 1,000? 1,000,000? Figuring out just how likely it is for a magical Christmas land combo to come together is our topic for the deck, and we'll be using the Turn-0 win combo as our example! 

One last thing before getting to the video. Normally, I try to include a written article to go along with the video, but it doesn't really work this week because we'll be fumbling around with a hypergeometric calculator on screen, which doesn't come across all that well in article form. Anyway, by the end of the day, you'll hopefully not only know the odds of getting the magical Christmas land Turn-0 kill but also how to calculate the odds of your own crazy combo going off!

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