I promised I'd write this tourney report. I didn't want to. But sometimes you have to talk about the style points you've collected while getting trounced in Magic.

Yes, I'm that guy - the eternal Johnny, the one that plays weird combo decks that surprise and delight the eight year olds at the 0-3 table. The pro players snort and say I'm crazy, while the rest of the room gathers around my matches because I like putting on a spectacle.

And what bigger spectacle than playing a coin flip deck?

Some rares are simply not valued by anyone, and it's easy to pick them up in trades. When I managed to collect four Krark's Thumbs, I knew I had to build this deck and to hell with the potential for humiliation. They laughed at Edison, you know. They laughed at Einstein. Okay, so they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Flipping Hammers
13 Mountain
4 Cloudpost
2 Temple of the False God
4 Great Furnace
4 Mana Clash
4 Krark's Thumb
4 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Fiery Gambit
3 Goblin Archaeologist
3 Shrapnel Blast
3 Sun Droplet
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Spellweaver Helix
3 Wirefly Hive
3 Talon of Pain

Sideboard:
3 Pyroclasm
3 Blood Moon
3 Darksteel Ingot
3 Demolish
3 Slice and Dice

This deck depends on chance, and if you know the percentages involved then it looks pretty sound in theory. I spent a long time working the percentages out, and since it's likely none of you sane people have, let me list them for you...along with an example of real-world events that occur with the same probability:

75% chance - With Thumb in play : Fiery Gambit stage 1, Goblin Archeologist kills exactly one artifact. Chance that Mana Clash lasts at least one round without Thumb, three or less rounds with the Thumb. Chance that Britney Spears will appear in Penthouse someday.

56% chance - Fiery Gambit stage 2 w/Thumb. Mana Clash - Two rounds (no Thumb). Chance that The Ferrett is right this very moment sitting back, getting drunk, and laughing at how he stuck Knut with the editor job.

50% chance - Fiery Gambit stage 1 (no Thumb), Goblin A. kills one (no Thumb), chance that John Kerry wins the U.S. presidential election.

42% chance - Fiery Gambit stage 3 w/Thumb, Goblin A. kills three w/Thumb. Chance that John 'Friggin' Rizzo would win the presidential election if he ran.

32% chance - Two Fiery Gambits stage 2 w/Thumb (twelve pts damage), Goblin A. kills four with Thumb. Chance that Oscar Tan owns a pair of underpants with rocket ships on them.

25% chance - Fiery Gambit stage 2 (no Thumb), Goblin A. kills two (no Thumb), Goblin A. kills five w/Thumb. Chance that, on any given day, Dave Meddish is wearing underpants.

18% chance - Three Fiery Gambits stage 2 w/Thumb, Goblin A. kills six w/Thumb. Chance that Sheldon Menery has looked at a copy of Penthouse and said,"The rules of physics don't allow people to do that." [I think he sticks to Playboy, Maxim, and FHM these days, buit the phrase is probably exactly right. - Knut]

12% chance - Fiery Gambit stage 3 (no Thumb), Goblin A. kills three (no Thumb) or seven w/Thumb. Chance that Stephen Menendian is John Kerry's illegitimate love-child.

8% chance - Three Fiery Gambits stage 3 w/Thumb. Chance that Ken Krouner has a love-child.

6% chance - Two Fiery Gambits stage 2 (no Thumb). Chance that I'll ever have a love-child.

2% chance - Three Fiery Gambits stage 2 (no Thumb), Two Fiery Gambits stage 3 (no Thumb). Chance that John Kerry will appear in Penthouse someday.

0.4% chance - Three Fiery Gambits stage 3 (no Thumb). Chance that a model from Penthouse will have a love-child with you, me, or anyone who has ever read this site.

This statistical analysis tells us three things. One, Goblin Archeologist with Krark's Thumb has the potential for causing massive damage to an Affinity deck. Two, if you can cast Fiery Gambit with a Thumb in play, you have a near 8% chance of winning the game right there. All you need to do is draw more Gambits with the first one you win. Even if you don't do that, the first one gives you a 42% chance of drawing nine cards - which is card advantage no matter how you measure it. And three, I really need to kick my Magic addiction if I ever want to find a hot girlfriend.

If you rewrote Fiery Gambit by what it averaged, it would read,"Do 1.5 damage to target creature, 1.5 damage to target player, and draw 1.125 cards." That's not great for 2R. But with the Thumb in play, an average Fiery Gambit reads,"Do 2.25 damage to target creature, 3.38 damage to target player, and draw 3.38 cards." I'd play that for 2R. (Yes, that's simplified a bit - if you're a statistics wonk I'll discuss it with you on the forums.)

But the Gambit is only one path to victory. Mana Clash has insane synergy with cards from Mirrodin block. The Sun Droplet effectively nullifies the damage the Clash does to you, while the Talon of Pain effectively doubles the damage the Clash does to your opponent.

Is there any way to get ahead in the percentage game? One simple way to do it is to flip coins more often. With that in mind I built the deck around a Hammer of Bogardan / Spellweaver Helix engine, so that I could replay Clashes and Gambits over and over again. Eventually, the theory goes, if you keep trying the percentages will come out in your favor.

The pro players reading this are smirking and thinking to themselves,"The theory is crap."

And they're right. Don't get me wrong - a deck like this might work in a slower environment. But the decks in Standard today are too fast to let their opponents play a numbers game. And disrupting a Krark's Thumb deck is fairly easy. There's just one key card the opponent has to destroy. I'll let you figure out yourself which card that is. Hint: Thumb through the deck until you find it.

So that brings me to my match record.

Well, not quite. When playing a deck of this calibre, it's obvious that you've come to FNM with the goal of having fun. So I decided to go in style. The last additions I made to this deck are two Liberty Head Silver dollars, one 1921 and one 1922. I told my opponents that I brought them just for style, and that we could use them or other coins or dice if they wished. I wasn't trying to pull anything, I just wanted to have fun.

And here's why I love this game: Not one of my opponents, neither pro players nor little kids, refused to use my coins. They could have suspected crooked coins, but they realized the coolness factor and trusted a madman with a coin flip deck. Gotta love it when people are good sports.

Match One: Matt, MonoWhite Control
Matt is one of the best players in the shop, and if I recall correctly, he won last year's Regionals. I sat down, explained the coins and why I brought them, and told him right away that I was probably a bye for him.

"What?" you say in shock?"You let your opponent get a psychological advantage over you by admitting certain defeat?" Look, Svengali, I was playing a coin flip deck. If I didn't recognize the likelihood of defeat, someone would have called for the nice men in white coats. Someone may still call them on me for writing this report. That psych-game bull may work once in a while, but there comes a point where it's just an inability to deal with reality. In my defense, I am taking the medication my doctor prescribed... blame him if the little blue pills don't stop my dog from telling me to make strange decks.

Anyway, Matt destroyed me as I predicted. I began to set up quickly the first game, and got a Helix with a hammer and Gambit out... but no Thumb. Meanwhile he had a Weathered Wayfarer pulling Cloudposts out of his deck. He cleared the board with an Oblivion Stone, then cycled Decree of Justice for more soldiers than I think I've seen before.

Second game was less fun. He put out a third turn Exalted Angel, which I Shrapnel Blasted, sacrificing a Great Furnace. Problem was, that left me with two lands... and I never drew another one. He hit me with another wave of soldiers two or three turns later.

Match Two: R/G Beatdown
I thought this was a land destruction deck, as LD is rampant in my local metagame. But my opponent (whose name I forget, sorry) was playing a simpler beat-you-bloody-with-big-creatures deck.

First game I managed to get a Talon of Pain and a Thumb in play, and Mana Clashed for enough damage to kill a Molder Slug with the Talon. But then he put out Molder Slug number two. My defenses crumbled, and he rolled me.

Second game he sideboarded in Oxidizes, and I don't think I kept any permanents in play for more than a turn.

"That's no fun - don't you want to see the deck go off at least once?"

Match Three: Corey, Ravager Affinity, U/R/B version
Ah, Affinity. I actually liked my chances against Ravager Affinity if I could set up early. Ensnaring Bridge stops the huge modular creatures and I had enough burn to handle Disciple of Pain. Goblin Archeologist was my secret weapon. He looks harmless, but he has the potential to do a lot of wrecking. (Yes, I did say I was on my meds, why do you ask?)

First game I burned a few things, and a Goblin with a Thumb destroyed two artifact creatures before burning out. But I didn't have a Bridge, and he had Skullclamp to keep the pressure on and kill me. I think it was over around turn 5.

The second game lasted longer. He sided in Echoing Ruin, I sided in Pyroclasm and Blood Moon. An early Blood Moon slowed him down a lot - no Thoughtcasts, no Disciples. But it didn't stop him. He had the colored mana to Echoing Ruin my Thumbs, and he slowly whittled at me with small modular creatures that I tried to keep Hammered down. With the Skullclamps, the Hammer was not giving me the card advantage I needed. I finally drew an Ensnaring Bridge one turn before he would have killed me, but he played a Ravager and attacked when it was 1/1... then sacced everything to it to kill me.

"Wow, I have a lot more cards than you."

"Of course you have more cards than I do! You have three friggin' Skullclamps in play! You're always going to have more cards than me. Is this somehow surprising to you?"

Match Four: Joey, White Weenie
Joey. Joey was eight-years-old. His father had given him a white weenie deck to play, with Knights, Bonesplitters, Dawn Elementals, etc. He had to be reminded to tap his attacking creatures and to untap his lands. Isn't that adorable?

Yes, when you play rogue you occasionally have to suffer true humiliation. If you win against an eight-year-old and they cry, you're marked as a jerk. If you lose against an eight-year-old, you're marked as a total loser and moron. What to do, what to do...

What I did was win. It wasn't much of a contest; Ensnaring Bridge kept his creatures down the first game, and I killed him with a chain of Fiery Gambits. ("Yes! It Worked!", I wanted to shout. But that might have caused little Joey permanent damage.) Second game was much the same, and I won the turn after I put a Hammer and a Gambit on a Helix.

But I tried to help Joey have fun. I told him the rules as we played, and afterwards I looked through his deck and offered suggestions on how to improve it. I gave him one or two White cards from my trade pile to help. I think he had a good time, and so did I, and that's what counted that night.

Match Five: Dave, B/W Rogue
I don't know what Dave was playing, but it was scary. He had the makings of a Rock deck - Phyrexian Plaguelord, Visara, Greater Harvester, etc. But he had a splash of White, and I don't know what it was for. I do know that the mana mix was wrong in his deck, and he could rarely cast what he had in hand.

Not that he didn't put up a fight. The first game I won handily, filling my graveyard with a string of Mana Clashes while I had a Thumb and two Sun Droplets in play. An Ensnaring Bridge shut down his big threats, and I eventually Gambitted him to death.

The second game he got all the mana he needed, and played a fourth turn Greater Harvester. This, for me, was a problem. I didn't have what I needed to kill it, and after it hit me once I had less than I had before. My only chance was to draw a Bridge quickly, and I didn't. Harvester... having nightmares about Harvester... I'll have to build a deck around that guy someday.

In the third game I set up quickly, did some damage with Mana Clashes, hit a stage 3 Fiery Gambit and drew enough Shrapnel Blasts to take him down. Not as stylish. But Dave and I had a lot of fun flipping the coins and chatting.

So, my final match record was 2-3. Pretty poor. Could have been worse, could have been worse... but this deck is just nowhere near competitive, and I knew it. That tournament, for me, was all about luck.

And after all, so is the game. Good decks maximize the chances of giving their players what they need early in the game. Bad decks have a chance, but their chances are either very small or take a long time.

To my mind, tempo is the measure of what stage of the game a deck is in. In chess they talk about the early game, midgame, and endgame. A good player gets to the endgame before his opponent, whether by fast offense or defenses that break his opponent's tempo. And so it is with Magic decks.

The Krark's Thumb deck has two endgames. One, assuming no missed land drops, is on turn 3 where Fiery Gambit kills with a 8% chance. Its more reliable endgame, though, is on turn 8, where Hammer recursion begins, which is a kill condition with or without a Helix in play. (I'll ignore the potential first turn kill with Mana Clash. That's so unlikely even my dog told me not to ever try it.)

The best decks have tempo that is fast and reliable. Rarely in Type II do they hit their endgames on turn 3, but they generally do soon after that.

The Krark's Thumb deck isn't the first deck to have a blindingly fast but unlikely endgame. That's what combo decks do. Except in combo decks the chances are determined by whether you draw the three or four combo cards you need, while the Thumb deck is determined by what side your Liberty Head Silver Dollars land on.

And given the choice between drawing the perfect combination of cards or flipping coins, I'd have to say that at least this time the coins were more fun.