Charm Followups

[awall]

I think I remember reading somewhere an opinion of some well-respected players (Taliesin, Slarty, etc.) that DFF is a better followup to PSDF than DFW. In most standard situations involving Charm, I see why this is true; Blindness is rarely a threat, and DFW is a good way to lose most of the initiative that the charm has gotten you.

However, in situations involving multiple charms, I'm not sure I understand why this should be the case. Let's take the simplest situation:

PSDFF
xPSD-

PSDF?
xPSD-


In this situation, if the second player gestures DFF, then he ensures that both Lightning Bolts will land. If he is behind on life, this is a bad outcome for him, as a small health difference is much more significant at lower totals than at higher totals. If I were the second player and behind, I'd much rather gesture DFW and stall the game than DFF and rush toward the end.

What if life totals are equal? Well, gesturing DFW essentially forces the second player to continue DFWW or DFWP. If the first player dummies into DFFF/xx-P, he can take a run at FoD, but it doesn't seem like a high percentage one (without doing a full analysis, I'd estimate it at about 2 50/50's, obviously depending on what the DFW player does with his other hand after being charmed). If the first player gestures DFFD, he then has the option to fire the bolt, or to dummy for DPP or DSF. Firing the bolt into a counterspell leaves initiative relatively even, with the DFW'er up by one life thanks to his Cure. Dummying gives minor advantage to the DFF'er, although again not significant, and I think the Cure offsets the initiative imbalance here; it's really small, IMO.

There are similar situations where the charms bounce instead of cross, but these depend much more on what is available on both players' other hands.

Is DFF really better than DFW in these cases? If so, can somebody who understands this better than I do show me what I'm missing here?

[vermont]

Taliesien would also dummy into PSDFPS against me on occasion. I don't remember the spell flow off-hand unfortunately, only that it worked quite effectively at the time.

[Slartucker]

The DFFD vs. WP matchup really does favor DFFD. I agree that it's not a large advantage, particularly given the DFW health point. The problem is that two outcomes hand a sizeable lead to the DFFD player: bolt vs dummy, and dummy vs counterspell. Dummy vs dummy is about even; DFFD has very mild initiative since the other player had to start WW or WP on one hand, but the other player has that health point. (However, if you chose DFW because your health was lower, this means you are still losing the match, if by slightly less.) Bolt vs counterspell is better for DFW I think, but it depends on what the other hands do. That's 1 out of 4. (And frankly, I'm not even sure about that one, this is off the top of my head from analyses done years ago.)

The other really bad option, before somebody suggests it, is DFWc. Clapping at a point when your opponent likely has DFFD/P is very bad.

[awall]

I think the part I disagree about is that dummy vs. counterspell gives a "sizable" lead to the dummier. Yes, he gets a little bit ahead, but the defenders other hand can be used to defend the potential Amnesia the turn after the counterspell. The attacker can dummy Amnesia to keep the defender off balance, but this now relies on the attacker correctly navigating a series of decision points (albeit ones that favor him) to retain his lead, and even if he does keep initiative, he still doesn't gain enough to guarantee anything substantial.

The other thing to consider is, at what kinds of life totals is it worse for the defender to swap bolts than to take a bit of initiative loss from gesturing DFW? I'd much rather be down 13-10 (or 13-11 after DFW) with a bit of lost initiative than down 8-5 after a pair of bolts. I'm not sure where the line is at which it becomes better to trade lightning, but being at five health or below when your opponent isn't sucks badly.

Edit: By the way, why would anyone ever go DFWc? Attempting to Mirror anything short of FoD is almost never a good idea.

[Slartucker]

Dummy vs counterspell leads to a standard, common D/P cycle vs counterspell cycle setup. If the D/P player avoids making mistakes, that setup favors him.