Dies to Removal

Nevertheless, I am very interested to see how that list performs.

That would be my guess as well. He mentions later in the article how the first deck wanted more lands because the power level of the cards allowed it to fight through mana-flood.

Saw this on ChannelFireball.
Finding the Optimal Aggro Deck via Computer Simulation
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles ... imulation/

Very interesting. He discusses it from the point of stronger card pool vs. weaker card pool to find the optimal mix of cards. In a card pool with better cards, his simulations suggest that 20 lands are best since the power of each card is relatively high. Whereas in a weaker card pool, less than 20 lands are best because land flood is punished more severely.