Well we do have the new Zurgo, The legendary is a minor downside but the dash is an upside....
I think we have to remember that this power/toughness ratios has to fit into what your design is trying to do and the environment it will be played in. You don't just take the largest numbers you can from these precedents and push them. It has to be for a reason.
You don't just take the largest numbers you can from these precedents and push them. It has to be for a reason.
Because we want to. Because finding out where the line between "strong and interesting for constructed" and "inappropriately cheap or big" is can be fun and challenging. Because designing mediocre cards or cards for limited isn't my thing. Actually, we don't need a reason at all, but thanks for your opinion. You've made several spam posts in this thread already. I'm going to ask that you not post in the thread anymore unless it's on topic and supportive (or at least constructive). There are other threads for other topics.
(This is the first part of my analysis, as I promised yesterday. I warn you that it's quite long. You can see the second part here.)
bravelion83's analysis, part 1
And so now it's my time to do some data analysis! Seeing the latest discussion on this thread, first let me be as clear as I can about my motivations: I'm not doing this to learn how to make potentially broken custom card designs or something like that, I'm just doing this mostly out of the curiosity to see how the behind-the-scenes mechanisms work and how the pieces are put together to solve the puzzle of designing a card. It's a pure Melvin approach, if you like to say it this way, but after all it reflects how I am, both as a player and as a person, how I think, and how my brain naturally works.
That said, be aware that this is just the first part of my analysis, because, as you will see, there is still a lot to be discussed and understood. As I mentioned multiple times already, I have a scientific background, so I will make a big use of it in this discussion. Data analysis in a chemistry laboratory can be much worse, I can assure you!
Maybe because of this influence, I had a similar but slightly different idea for my analysis. I like rancored_elf's analysis a lot, trying to see where the boundaries are for each color is a wonderful idea, and he did a great job with that. After reading it, my scientific mind naturally asked itself if there was a way to make the following step, which is to find a way to make a quantitative analysis, possibly estimating those boundaries with some equations in a cartesian system, so that we could compare things on equal basis. In the beginning, I didn't know where this quantification approach would have led me, or if it would have worked at all. It was just a way to pass an otherwise boring Sunday night. But in the end I just tried it, and guess what? It kind of worked! And what I'm presenting here is the first batch of its results.
I didn't immediately come up with the final version of my work. At first, I saw that the list practically was an expression of the highest existing toughness as a function of cmc and power. Mathematically, we have a function of two variables, z = f(x,y), where z is the toughness, x the cmc, and y the power. So, my first thought was to plot this function as a surface in a xyz 3D cartesian space. I tried doing that for green, because rancored_elf started his analysis from green too, so I hoped to find some comparable results. I'll cut short: this approach didn't work. I was able to obtain the graph I wanted, but it wasn't readable at all. I just saw a surface with a couple peaks, but it didn't tell me anything useful.
After this first failure, what I did was arranging my data from the common list in a different way. I chose to use the common list because I think that it should be more representative of design trends. Cards that deviate from the norm are usually at higher rarities, so I should be able to exclude most of those deviations using the common list. I will surely do the same work with the complete list in the future, but before getting to that, I wanted to have an idea of what the basic tendencies are, and I think the common list is the best for that purpose.
For each color, I created a table with mana costs on rows and power values in columns. Here I encountered the first problem in this approach: how do I consider quantitatively double colored mana costs? I excluded triple colored mana costs, because if you check my common list there are no cards with those except for Kindercatch. I felt like sacrificing one card for a much greater ease of calculation was a reasonable compromise.
In my article about costing ("The price is right", you can find the link in my signature), I explain that a double colored mana cost 1CC (where C is a colored mana symbol of any color) is worth more than 2C but less than 3C. My solution was to put it exactly in the middle. I have no theoretical reason for doing that, I just had to if I wanted to progress. Let's call it a convention if you prefer. So, 2C is worth 3 mana, 3C is worth 4 mana, and 1CC is worth 3.5 mana. A reminder for those that might not know: here in Italy we use the comma instead of the period for decimal numbers. That means that in all tables and graphs that you're going to see, 3.5 mana will be written as 3,5 because I use the Italian version of Excel. In the written text I'm going to use the English notation with the period, but as the images are screenshots you'll see commas in those.
With this convention established, I went on to create the tables. In the first column you see mana costs, in the second how much mana they are worth (obviously, Excel doesn't naturally know about the Magic mana system, so I had to tell it), and in the following ones the maximum toughness for that mana cost (row) and power (column), if such a value exists. Where it doesn't exist, I left an empty cell. It may sound complicated, but it's just another way to arrange the data from my list, there is nothing new. The results were the following tables, one for each color, where "P" followed by a kind of arrow means "in this row there are the power values":
I colored each cell with a scale going from the lightest color (lower toughness) to the darkest color (higher toughness) to have an immediate visual idea of the distribution of those values. We can already see some interesting things from here:
- In red's table, toughness is never higher than 5. This is coherent with common knowledge that red creatures have much higher power than toughness on average.
- If we compare red and green's tables, we see that they have a very similar shape, and the main if not only difference is that green's table is much darker, which means that on average its creatures get a higher toughness for the same cmc and power. Again, this is coherent with common knowledge: red has a low toughness and green has the biggest creatures under equal conditions.
- In white and blue's tables, there seems to be a "wall" between 3 and 4 power. There are very few or no creatures in those colors that have more than 3 power at common, at any mana cost. A seeming contradiction is with blue's typical Serpents, but those always have a drawback of the "can't attack unless..." kind, so they don't count here. The only difference between white and blue seems to be that blue's shape is somewhat "thinner" than white.
- Black and green seem to have the darkest shapes, which means the highest toughness. They are also the only colors to have toughness values equal or greater than 7 appearing somewhere in their tables. This is also coherent with common knowledge. Maybe one unexpected fact is that white doesn't seem to have that high of an average toughness too.
- As rancored_elf also noted, there is a visible order in creature strength, as seen by how low and right the shape reaches: white and blue are lower than black, which is lower than red and green.
All this was already interesting, but I wanted more. I wanted equations! So I took all the data from each of the previous tables and put it in that many graphs, where I chose to insert converted mana cost (cmc) on the y axis and power values in the x axis, to try to replicate rancored_elf's images with his arrangements of P/T and the marked boundaries. I managed in doing that, but with a caveat: if you want to compare directly the following graphs to rancored_elf's images, you have to reflect them over the x axis. I couldn't avoid that if I didn't want to use negative values of cmc, which I don't want as they have no actual meaning. Then, I took the top and bottom points for each power value and let Excel interpolate them linearly (top and bottom values separately, of course), telling me the equation and the R squared value. I'm not going to explain here what R squared is, if you don't know about it you'll surely find all the definitions and formulas by googling it, but the short version is that it's a statistic indicator that tells us how well the line approximates the given points. A perfect line that crosses exactly all given points has an R squared value of 1. The closest our R squared is to 1, the better the linear approximation is.
The top line, which I drew in dark red, corresponds to the left boundary of rancored_elf's analysis ("SX" is short for "sinistra" which means "left" in Italian). Similarly, the bottom line, which is drawn in blue, corresponds to the right boundary ("DX" is short for "destra", which means "right" as opposed to "left" in Italian). Points that are outside the area between those two lines corresponds to cmc/power combinations that are either too weak (the area above the red line, for example a 1 power creature for 6 mana) or too strong (the area below the blue line, for example a 6 power creature for 1 mana). The results are the following graphs, where the scale of the axis has been kept the same so that they are comparable.
We can see that the approximations are overall very good, there are just a couple cases where the R squared is not very good (0.6 in blue's red line, and 0.85 in black's red line), but all others are above 0.9, which is good. There are even a couple 1's. Many interesting things can already be seen, and how the boundaries change from one color to another is clearly visible. Yet, I made a further step, and I overlaid all the lines in a single graph. What allows me to do this is exactly the fact that now I have equations, so I just have to make Excel plot them all in a single graph. The colors of the lines correspond to the Magic colors. The top and bottom lines for each color should be easily distinguishable.
We can make some other interesting observations from here:
- As common knowledge states, white has indeed the strongest weenies: it has the lowest "DX" line for power lower than 2.
- Green is the only color whose lines appear to "open up" going from low to high power, and its lines also have a much greater space between them compared to the other colors. I'm taking this as confirmation and consequence of the fact that green has the biggest creatures, especially at high cost and power/toughness.
- Blue creatures suck. We knew it already from common knowledge, but seeing how much they suck in these graphs is kind of surprising to me. It's the only color for which we can see the intersection of the lines on the graph area.
- Red and green share the same "DX" line, but they have very different "SX" lines. I have no interpretation yet for this fact, it's just something I noticed.
- Another fact I noticed but I have no interpretation for yet is that red's lines are almost parallel, and this is confirmed by their angular coefficients, which are close: 0.65 and 0.75. (for those that don't know, the angular coefficient of a line is the number coming right before the x in its equation, and it expresses the slope of the line; if two lines have the same angular coefficient they are parallel).
- A last fact I noticed but didn't expect is that white and black have a similar trend: the "DX" are almost overlapping and the "SX" almost parallel (angular coefficients respectively 0.5 and 0.45). It appears that the only big difference between them is that white's common creatures stop at 3 power, while black's ones can have higher power.
Finally, note that in all this reasoning I never took into account the actual toughness values, but just their mere existence for a given mana cost and power. There is certainly progress to be made in this aspect.
Possible future developments:
- Interpret the uninterpreted facts I just talked about.
- Find a way to also consider actual toughness values.
- Make power/toughness curves for a given mana cost, and understand if and how they could be helpful. The mana cost 3B looks particularly promising for this from the tables: it has many power/toughness couples existing and their trend looks good from the sheer numbers.
- Understand if frequency counts and if so how (frequency as in how many creatures exist with that given cmc, power and toughness).
- Understand if the intersection point of each color's two lines can be a somewhat quantitative expression of that color's strength in creatures.
- Understand if it's possible to make a meaningful similar analysis for gold and hybrid costs. My view at this moment is that for both those categories there are not enough values in the list to have an adequate sample size.
And this is the first batch of results, further analysis will follow but I don't know when. I know there is nothing new for now in this, but still I think and hope that having some even approximate way to visualize and quantify the boundaries is an appreciable progress in the analysis. I will definitely continue my work and I'm sure these are not the only results I will present. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through. If not, I understand.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
@Bravelion83: Great analysis!. Am I right that the color's archetypal creatures sizes are consistently maintained at common and then diverge at higher rarities? Also the images seem to be broken for me.... FIXED IT
You've made several spam posts in this thread already.
I apologize. I should of restrained myself and PMed Bravlion rather than posting here.
I'm going to ask that you not post in the thread anymore unless it's on topic and supportive (or at least constructive). There are other threads for other topics.
No need for that.
I am fully supportive of the project. Its a great resource to study the bounds of our precedents. As all magic design needs to be aware of its past this makes for a good reference when making vanilla or near vanilla creatures.
My only worry is that reducing strictly down to numbers (especially in your "filling the holes" graph) risks forgetting the underlying design reasons that the bounds are their in the first place. Red doesn't have a 2/2 for 1R because they can't print it. Its because they don't want to print it because its important for the identity of the color. This is a design reason that keeps the color pie intact and the mechanical identities of the colors unique.
This is why I find Bravelion's data so much more interesting here as you can see the color pie trends in the creatures far more distinctly making it a more useful to demonstrate the design behind the color pie.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I love the data you've collected but disagree with the analysis that you have made for the "filling the holes" section.
@Bravelion83: Great analysis!. Am I right that the color's archetypal creatures sizes are consistently maintained at common and then diverge at higher rarities?
Also the images seem to be broken for me....
Thanks! For now I've done the analysis only for common creatures. Expanding it to other rarities is one of the advancements planned for the near future. As I do it we'll see if my data show some divergence. I expect to see at least some more divergence than at common, but for now that's nothing but my own expectation, in no way backed up by actual data. As I wrote, further analysis will certainly follow.
I can see all of the images, can anyone tell us if they also can't see the images? Hopefully we can understand if it's only Doombringer's problem or not. That's a shame because the images are the most interesting part of the analysis in my opinion.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Okay, thanks for saying that Doombringer. I should have been more diplomatic - I thinkknow I'm oversensitive to being told "you can't design like that here", or anything remotely like that, because I get it a lot in this forum. There's an attitude of "you're cheating at design because you just want everything to be broken" or something. That's not it at all. I think it takes skill to find that fine line between playably-strong and over-the-top. I like this aspect of design, and it's a creative outlet for me. I know it's not for everybody, and that's okay, but I feel defensive when I get told that my style isn't welcome. I don't like designs that needlessly obsolete something already in print, along with almost all other designers out there. But I DO like finding out where the boundary is, and I think there's value in knowing.
I'm not a fan of power creep, but I can see it happening nonetheless. Much like inflation in the economy, it's always there and it's probably bigger than we notice. At some point, it will have major damaging effects on things if left unchecked.
"disagree with the analysis that you have made for the "filling the holes" section"
Cool, well feel free to get into specifics about what can be changed. Keep in mind it's still in rough form, and I share your concern for creating designs that fill holes but damage a colour's identity. I think I wrote about that here in the thread, saying that not every design is meant to see print, it's just an example of the stats that such a creature might have if it DID see print. Black may very well get a 2/1 for B, according to the analysis, but why hasn't it ever been printed? Are they waiting for the right time, or would they just prefer to print 2/2s with drawbacks because that's more black's style? So don't worry, I get what you're saying. And yet.....
Dakmor Rat - B
Creature - Rat (C) They've been there all along - you just weren't looking.
2/1
Dakmor Rat needs to be uncommon for Limited reasons. At common, you risk someone getting 5-6 copies, and getting totally busted starts (turn 1 2/1, turn 2 2x 2/1, turn 3 removal/tempo spell) that are fine in Constructed but hideous in Limited.
Other than that, the card fits the power curve of Black's 'good but not outstanding' creatures.
Hehehe, maybe the Rats would be uncommon if printed in a set meant for drafting, sure. I haven't been including rarity in the discussion in this thread, nor any of the other cards I've posited based on the data or analysis. I only mentioned rarity for the Rats to make a weak joke (rats multiply so fast and infest an area... ie they become very common). But yeah.
Anyway, here's my rough work on a new way to analyze the master list. This builds off some of my earlier stuff, and bravelion's analysis has touched on similar topics.
I was doing polygons before. The more I look at this stuff, the more obvious it is that the right-hand side of the data is the business side. Each color has a fairly obvious slope that can be drawn (although black has that 5/1 vanilla sticking way out in the midrange, so I'm not completely sure where to draw that one).
Once drawn, the lines tell a few things.
1) The upper-left point of the line shows how powerful that colour's weenies can be. W > G > R > B > U (looks good)
2) The lower-right point of the line shows how powerful that colour's fatties can be. R > G > B > U > W (red may get 6/2 for the same price green gets 5/5, so red fatties have the highest power)
3) The center point of the line shows how powerful that colour's creatures overall can be. G > R > B > W > U (rings true)
4) The line shows (by precedent) what is likely "safe" to be printed without rocking the boat. Designs on the line might be possible, but designs to the right of the line become increasingly unlikely. A 3-power at BB seems inevitable. Blue is very unlikely to get a 4-power creature without drawbacks for under 4 mana. 7 power for 3RR and up looks good. And so on.
5) The left side of the data deals more with bottomheavy (higher toughness) creatures. It seems far less strict, meaning most colours (aside from red) have access to creatures with much higher toughness than power. I won't spend much time analyzing the left side. Creatures aren't played for their toughness much in Magic, except maybe at very low mana costs. Above 3 mana or so, no amount of toughness really changes the playability of a creature, and Wizards' designers don't seem to worry too much about them, judging by their design decisions.
I noticed that my recent in-depth analysis of green helped me decide where to draw the green line above. Perhaps going more in-depth (into higher and more colour-intensive mana costs) for the other colours would be useful, too. I'll do red or white next and see how that goes. I'll re-post green here:
I haven't been including rarity in the discussion in this thread
This is exactly what I'm working on in these days, inspired by one of Doombringer's posts. In a few days I hope to be ready to post an analysis about different rarities.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
This is exactly what I'm working on in these days, inspired by one of Doombringer's posts. In a few days I hope to be ready to post an analysis about different rarities.
Yeah, I've been reading your posts on it, and looking forward to more. But what I meant to say was I haven't been putting rarities on the sample cards I come up with. I've just been leaving them out of any designs that come from the data and analysis, except for the Dakmor Rat.
I appreciate your feedback! I'll post an in-depth look at white before I go to bed tonight. Looks like there aren't any surprises there, just another data point or two to confirm the slope we're already seeing on the data.
Are the op charts up to date with all relevant contributed data?
The master list (both in text form and charted form) is up-to-date. The wording in the OP will need revamping when I post a fresh version of this thread (after some more analysis is finished up).
I'll go through my first few posts on the thread tonight and make them as up-to-date as I can. But a fresh thread (letting this one sink down) is what it'll eventually need
EDIT: Here's white's extended chart.
Observations...
- Vengeful Archon is the only significant data point after opening up the data to costs above 6, and costs involving more than 2 coloured mana (WW). It falls perfectly where one would expect it to, and helps solidify the line drawn down the right side of white's data.
- Like green, white's weenies can be topheavy... in fact white's weenies are the most topheavy of any colour. White's fatties, on the other hand, tend not to favour power at all, and even a 7 power creature costs white 4WWW.
- I've put a strike through some of the stats, indicating instances where it has little impact on white's "identity" as a color, which is more represented by the line down the right side than anything else. They're still useful data, but they don't set white's confines.
- There are a few gaps on the "safe" side of the line that will probably be filled at some point, and are up for grabs for design. Keep in mind, not everything that can be done SHOULD be done. This analysis just shows what it would probably look like.
Loxodon Convert probably isn't white's cheapest possible 4-power creature. Given white's love of topheavy weenies like Accorder Paladin, a 4/1+ or 4/2 for 1WW is no problem.
Spiritpouncer - 1WW
Creature - Spirit 1WW: Spiritpouncer gains first strike, flying and vigilance until end of turn.
4/1
While a 2/2 seems a shoe-in, there's no room for a 3/1 at W. That doesn't mean a 3/1 with a drawback is out of the question, though. A miniscule drawback is sometimes enough to balance out an otherwise overpowered design, such as a 2/2 haste Goblin for R. My 3/1 won't have haste, but 3/1s inherently cost more than 2/2s, so I'll need a larger-than-miniscule drawback.
Curious Lynx - W
Creature - Cat
Whenever Curious Lynx becomes blocked, it gets -3/-0 until end of turn.
3/1
And now, something maximizing toughness for 3-power creatures, looks like it could fit nicely in the above image at 1WWW.
Stalwart Hometroops - 1WWW
Creature - Human Soldier
Vigilance
3/8
That would be a nice uncommon. Or knock it up to a rare 3/7 with an additional non-keyword ability (such as "whenever Stalwart Hometroops blocks, it gains lifelink until end of turn").
Observations:
- Phyrexian Obliterator, Halo Hunter, Hollowborn Barghest, Lord of the Void, and Demon of Death's Gate helped flesh out black's data when I incorporated heavily-black and 6+ mana costs.
- The addition of Halo Hunter and Demon of Death's Gate to the data helped answer the question of where black's line in. Without them, there weren't enough data points to see where to place it. (And of course, the line is subjective and meant as an approximation only.) Now we can see Rotting Fensnake isn't a random anomaly - it actually fits within black's confines (albeit barely).
- Dakmor Rat from above (2/1 for B) now looks even more obvious.
- Black lately has been getting 2/2+ for 1B, and has no problem with topheavy creatures. Why no 3/1 for 1B yet? It's certainly not overpowered and would fit nicely within black's confines. It's probably around the corner.
- Black has no 8 power creatures without drawbacks. 7 and 9, yes, but no 8. Actually that's not true, I've just learned about Fell Shepherd, an 8/6+ for 5BB which isn't eligible for the master list. But it does give some indication of official design philosophy. I think an 8-power monstrosity might cost 4BBB.
Killbloodpain Demon - 4BBB
Creature - Demon
Flying
Sacrifice another creature: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn and Killbloodpain Demon gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
8/8
I'm not 100% sure about black's line ("break line" might be a good term for it, since any stats to the right of the line are "broken"). Green and white's were more obvious. It's entirely possible that the break line could be more of a break curve. I'll carry on and finish up with red and blue, and that will probably give us some clues about black. It's definitely better than it was before I did this latest analysis though
- Shorecrasher Elemental (3/3+ for UUU) doesn't change blue's identity much, as it just slides right into the data where you'd expect it to. (Side note: I'm noticing that CCC and 3C often produce the same stats. I'll keep an eye on that pattern.)
- Goliath Sphinx (8/7+ for 5UU) helps reveal where blue's break line is. It looks more and more like blue is just a non-artifact colourless colour. By that I mean blue's identity is almost exactly the same as colourless' identity. Making a colorless creature's mana cost bluer doesn't boost the creature's stats. For every other colour, making the cost more coloured (and less colourless) allows the stats to increase, but with blue, the only advantage to being more blue is that you're no longer killed by Shatter. (Of course, blue has cheaper access to keywords like flying that colourless creatures don't.)
- Blue is rarely topheavy but can be VERY bottomheavy. That said, it is still by far the weakest colour for creatures overall. The exception is probably at 1U and 0 power, where blue beats every other colour by having a creature with 6!! toughness, no drawbacks, and an upside. What other colour can match Dragon's Eye Savants? Not that Sidisi's Faithful is any slouch.
- Having 2 more power than toughness seems to be about the limit for blue. A 3/1 for 2U looks likely (a Merfolk Soldier perhaps). 4/2+ for 3U hasn't been done yet, but certainly could, and probably will.
Snapface Turtle - 3U
Creature - Turtle
Whenever Snapface Turtle blocks, it gets -4/+8 until end of turn.
4/2
- Expanding red's data to higher and/or more red-intensive costs revealed Thunderblust, Knollspine Dragon, Tyrant of Discord, and Living Inferno as significant data points.
- Thunderblust adjusted red's break line out slightly, though it turns out it is only about as aggressive as Regathan Firecat.
- Red is great at topheavy creatures, especially at higher mana costs. (People think of red as the most-aggressive weenie colour, but that distinction goes to green and white.)
- 8/4 for 3RRR or 6R looks good. 9/5+ for 5RR and 10 power for 7R (Bearer of the Heavens aside) are easily doable.
Topplespire - 3RRR
Creature - Titan (R)
First strike
Topplespire can't be blocked except by 2 or more creatures.
7/4
- I haven't focused much on colourless in this thread, but the data's there. It's just not that interesting, although it does provide a baseline for stats in the other colours.
- Hexplate Golem and Artisan of Kozilek helped expand the picture, the latter confirming colourless' break line nicely. The break line is also approached by Memnite and Insatiable Souleater (2 cards that need no improvement).
- Notice the gaps along the breakline at 1, 2, and 3. Those will go unfilled, as 1 will never buy you a 2/1, 2 will never buy you a 3/1, and 3 will (probably) never buy you a 4/1.
- There's room for a 6/3+ at 5, and lots of designs to be explored in the 7 and 8 range.
I'm now working on unifying the data and analysis done on "break lines". It will probably replace my discussion of "confines" and polygons in this thread. It's a more complete and detailed model to explain the master list, and to help it hint at potential designs.
- I haven't focused much on colourless in this thread, but the data's there. It's just not that interesting, although it does provide a baseline for stats in the other colours.
I've been ignoring it too thus far in my analysis, while including it in my lists. I think I'll include it later. Now in this exact moment I'm writing the second part of my analysis, I think I'm going to post it later today or tomorrow at worst.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Shouldn't colorless cards that nonetheless have a color identity be considered that color for the purposes of the master list? For example, Insatiable Souleater is green.
Shouldn't colorless cards that nonetheless have a color identity be considered that color for the purposes of the master list? For example, Insatiable Souleater is green.
It's green only if you play Commander. And even there, it's not a green card, but a colorless card that you can play in monogreen decks because it has a green color identity. If you don't play Commander (as I don't), it is just a colorless card with a green ability to you. And that puts it among the colorless card, not among the green ones. That's my opinion and that's also why I have it under "colorless" in my list and not "green". I can see a Commander player seeing it as a green card, because for his or her purposes it is, but unfortunately it is not one technically.
In other news, I finished the written part of my second analysis, now I just have to capture, edit, and upload the images, which are a lot as you will see, so it will take some time. Done that, I'll post it here.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Shouldn't colorless cards that nonetheless have a color identity be considered that color for the purposes of the master list? For example, Insatiable Souleater is green.
It's green only if you play Commander.
But the master list is about the eternal card pool, not formats, so why treat colorless cards that have a color identity as though they are colorless?
Also, Shipbreaker Kraken is on the list for 4UU, but there isn't a creature for 3UUU despite the existence of Guile and Sphinx of Magosi. Are XCCC creatures not being considered for the master list? (I thought they had been added.)
Have you considered a master master-list that consists only of the best of the best of the best creatures for each cmc regardless of color or lack thereof?
But the master list is about the eternal card pool, not formats, so why treat colorless cards that have a color identity as though they are colorless?
My list is not about the eternal card pool. In fact, in my list I've specified that I'm only looking at Modern legal cards. That's to avoid cards from a long time ago that were designed with different design principles than today's ones. I think that's the case with rancored_elf's list too.
Also, having a color identity and being a color are two very different things, defined differently in the rules. I'm not treating a colorless card with a color identity as though it were colorless, I'm treating it as colorless because it is actually colorless. It also happens to have a non-colorless color identity, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a colorless card because it has no colored mana symbols in its mana cost.
Also, Shipbreaker Kraken is on the list for 4UU, but there isn't a creature for 3UUU despite the existence of Guile and Sphinx of Magosi. Are XCCC creatures not being considered for the master list? (I thought they had been added.)
In my original version of the complete list, the one you can find in post #15 of this thread, creatures with triple colored mana costs should be there. I then chose to ignore them because doing so simplified a lot my calculations. I don't exclude to include them again in a future analysis if I find a quantitative way to express mathematically a triple colored mana cost. At the contrary, if I recall correctly, rancored_elf excluded them from his list in the beginning, but now he started adding triple colored mana costs to his deeper analysis in his latest posts.
Have you considered a master master-list that consists only of the best of the best of the best creatures for each cmc regardless of color or lack thereof?
I don't know if rancored_elf did, but I have not yet. Personally, I'm not that interested in such an analysis right now, also because I'm exactly trying to see and quantify the differences among colors, as you will see as soon as I post part two of my analysis. I think I will post it tomorrow, as now I'm not able to upload all the images I need to. Also, I don't know how useful such analysis would be, as Magic card design is very dependant on color. Anyway, it may be a future development. It just isn't that high in my priorities now.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Souleater tells me that can get me a 5/1+ (a 5/1 with an upside). The green mana symbol doesn't change anything about the previous statement because 4 colourless mana can still get you at least a 5/1 creature. I know what you mean - trample is a green thing mostly, and there's an option to pay instead of 2 life to trigger the ability. So the card has a green feel. But that STILL doesn't change the first statement.
My master list cares about what is possible, looking at precedent, for each possible mana cost. When it comes to 4 colorless, the answer is currently 2/4+, 3/3+, or 5/1+. I'm definitely not saying this is the only way to do it, because there are many variations possible. But I have to stay internally consistent in my data collection and analysis, and that's the way I decided to do it, so I'm sticking with it. I encourage any and all variations!
Here are the results of my in-depth look into each colour, with a focus on power.
In the next post, I'll analyze these results in different ways.
(As promised, here's the second part of my analysis. If the first part was long enough, this is even longer. In fact, I think now you'll be able to see why this took me multiple days to make. You have been warned!)
bravelion83's analysis, part 2
This is the second part of my analysis. In what follows I will assume you read the first part and thus you are familiar with the method I'm using and the output it produces. If you haven't read the first part yet, I kindly ask you to do so before going on reading this, because here I will build on that.
A premise: I totally support the use of the term "break line" proposed by rancored_elf in one of his last analysis. In addition to that, I'm now proposing the adoption of the term "weak line" to indicate the other line, that rancored_elf chose to ignore for now while I'm still considering it, even if at the end of today's analysis you'll see that I also admit it has a lot less significance than the other one. So, from now on, I'm adopting the terms "break line" for the "DX" line and "weak line" for the "SX" line ("DX" and "SX" are defined in the first part of my analysis if you don't know what I mean). In the many graphs I'm going to show you today, you'll still see "DX" and "SX", because they were made before rancored_elf proposed the use of "break line", but in the text I will use "break line" and "weak line" for the "DX" and "SX" lines respectively. Those names do a great job in explaining what they mean: the "break line" is the line beyond which creatures are too strong (aka "broken"), while the "weak line" is the line beyond which creatures are too weak. If I want to refer to both lines at the same time, I'll call them "boundaries" or "boundary lines".
With that said, now I'm going to briefly touch on a question I left open last time, and then I'll present the progress I made in these last few days.
1. THE OPEN QUESTION
One of the open questions I mentioned at the end of the first part was if the intersection point of the two boundary lines of a color could be a quantitative measure of that color's strength in creatures. I think now I have an answer to that question, and the answer is negative. To explain you why, I'll show you the calculated coordinates of the boundary lines for each color at common (that are the lines shown in the graphs in part one):
Remember that power is on the x axis and cmc on the y axis. While for white, blue, and black the coordinates of the intersection points could make some sense (8 power for 8W in white, 5 power for 6UU in blue, and 7 power for 7B in black are still somewhat plausible values), for the other colors we obtain absurd results: 37 power (red's x) can't exist on a creature! 28 mana (red's y) has never been seen as a cost! And while there are a couple creatures in the game with negative power, -13 power (green's x) just can't be right! And a negative cmc (green's y) doesn't make any sense at all! So, in the end I don't think this approach leads to any good result. That's why I said the answer was negative.
The additional column you see in the table comes from another approach I tried when I discovered the previous one's failure. Inspired by the concept of integral in calculus, I thought about considering the area of the triangle defined by the intersection of the boundary lines and the intersection of each of them with the y axis. The area values of those triangles are what you see in the "area" column. But as you can see, this approach didn't work either: red is certainly not the strongest creature color, and green has a negative area because its triangle is to the left of the y axis instead of being on the right like the others. So for now I have to acknowledge that I haven't been able to find a quantitative method to measure a color's strength in creatures. I don't exclude to make other attempts in the future, but for now I'll dedicate myself to other matters.
2. RARITY ANALYSIS
One of these other matters was brought up by Doombringer in one of his posts in this thread, that inspired me to do an analysis based on all different rarities, aiming to see if the boundaries changed in some way, and if so how, going from common to uncommon, then rare, and finally mythic rare. This is what I've done in the days that have passed since I posted the first part of my analysis, and this will also be the bulk of this second part of it.
For completeness, I'll repost here in the following spoiler the tables and graphs relative to the common rarity, which are exactly the same as those in the first part with just the title of the graphs changed to specify the rarity. For their discussion I also remand you to the first part of my analysis.
WHITE
BLUE
BLACK
RED
GREEN
GRAPHS
Doing the same for the other rarities means to repeat all Gatherer searches separately for each other rarity, obtaining an uncommon list, a rare list, and a mythic list. Then, for each of those lists, the same tables and graphs needed to be built. This was a work that took me multiple days, but I did it. Now I'm going to discuss each rarity separately, presenting you all that data and doing a little discussion for each rarity. At the end, I'll also do some generic considerations summing it all up. The limitations are always the same for all the lists: Modern legal, without drawback, cmc max 6, and max double colored mana cost. Let's go!
Here at uncommon we see a very similar trend to the one we've already seen at common. Let's start from the break line ("DX", the one lower in the graphs). We confirm that the lowest break line for power less than 2 is the white one, coherently with the known fact that the best weenies are white, and that going up on the y axis we meet blue and black first and then red and green. That is supposed to reflect the order of the colors in the strength of their weenies. The results seem strange: white is the strongest, and that's right, but blue and black getting stronger weenies at common and uncommon than red and green looks weird. For red it could be rationalized because of its low toughness, but we know it's not it for real, because we haven't analyzed the actual toughness values yet, but still let's accept that interpretation for now. For green, it could be rationalized saying that as it gets the biggest creatures at higher mana costs, having weaker creatures at low mana costs can be a balancing factor. But here there are some things to note:
- First, these are just rationalizations. They are just attempts to explain an observation "a posteriori" as we say in Italian (and according to Google, in English too, please correct me if I'm wrong), which means we're trying to invent an explanation to match with the given observed data rather than searching data to confirm an already existing theoretical idea.
- Second, and more importantly, note that at both common and uncommon, this trend changes as soon as you reach power 1. Between power 1 and 2 the order is the following: white is still the strongest (lowest break line), followed by red and green, which are then followed by blue and black. This makes much more sense in Magic's common knowledge, so we can take it as a confirmation of it without further rationalization.
- Above power 2, the order changes again: red and green become the strongest colors, followed by white and black, with blue last in the distance. Again, this makes sense with common knowledge. Remember that we're still not taking into account the actual toughness values, so red and green appear closer than they probably actually are, because when you consider toughness values, red becomes much weaker than green, as confirmed by the fact that its tables at both rarities are much lighter than green's ones, which are actually the darkest ones overall together with black. This means that on average green and black are the color with the highest toughness, and that's also coherent with common knowledge. We had already seen much of this in the first part of my analysis about common, here we see that this all applies at uncommon too. But...
- ...lastly, we can note a difference: at high power, the break lines of the different colors are much closer at uncommon than at common, and actually quite much. This could be completely meaningless, due to a coincidence or a slightly different distribution of values, or it can actually have some meaning and reflect a much greater variance at common rather than uncommon in creatures with high power. I still haven't come to a definitive conclusion about this.
- About the weak lines ("SX", higher lines in the graphs), we can notice that the trend is almost the same, except for black. Black changes quite a lot going up from common to uncommon. The order at low power (you can see easily see it looking at the intersections of the weak lines with the y axis) goes from green and red, then black together with white and blue at common to green, then black is here together with red, then white and blue by themselves at uncommon. At high power (look at the other end of the weak lines), in common we have blue, then black as the second worst color, then white and red, then a huge gap with green after that as the most inclusive color by far, in the sense that it includes much more combinations of cmc/power in its possible range compared to all other colors. At uncommon, we have white joining blue, then after a little gap there's red, then there is the huge gap and after that green (as expected), but also black! Black passes from being the second lowest to being the highest, with a weak line parallel to green but even higher. Why is there this big of a shift with black going up in rarity? Why are green and black's weak lines parallel, as red and green's break lines also are? I don't have any explanation right now. These will join the other open questions for now.
- Finally, let's look at the intersection coordinates and area values for uncommon:
We can see that no color has negative values here at uncommon, which means that all colors have boundary lines that "open up" going from low to high power. This happened also at common, except for green. We'll talk again about this later, for now we'll just note it.
We can also see that area values follow the same trend as the abscissa of the intersection points, as we could have expected after all. Here the values seem to reflect much better the relative strength of the colors: green as the best creature color, followed by black, red, white, and blue. Green as the best and blue as the worst make a lot of sense. It looks strange to see white this low. About red we have to notice again that I'm still not considering actual toughness values, which favors red, that is the weakest colors in toughness. Black in the middle makes sense, but it can look strange seeing it as the second color after green.
This concludes for now my analysis about uncommon. Let's go up another step, to see if the trends we noticed are confirmed.
Let's start again from the break line. We see again the change at power 2 we're used to by now: for power less than 2 white is the strongest color, for power more than 2 it's one of the weakest ones. But there is a little observation to make though: here for power less than 2 all the other colors are much closer to one another, and become spread out when power increases. In fact, at high power, we have red and green's break lines practically overlapping, then black right in the middle, then white and blue together as the weakest colors (highest break line). It's interesting to note the shift of white's break line: while all the other colors kept the same relative order, white starts being overlapping with black's break line at common, right between blue and black's break lines at uncommon, and here at rare it gets even worse than blue's break line, looking like the absolute weakest color at high power. It's a shift we don't observe in all other colors. Why is it so? Another question that joins the list of unanswered ones.
We also keep seeing the break lines of the different colors getting closer to one another. We already saw that at uncommon, but we see it even more at rare. That's a sign that the difference in creature strength decreases when rarity increases. This is mathematical proof of the fact that even the colors that aren't allowed to have strong creatures at common can get them at higher rarities. This is an expected discovery, but now I can prove it mathematically and quantify it in graphs! I see this as one of the most concrete results I've obtained until now in this analysis.
Let's also take a look at the weak lines. Here we see a similar trend to what we've seen talking about uncommon, but with two differences, one minor and one major. The minor difference is black's weak line at low power (check its intersection with the y axis): at uncommon it was sharing red's place as second from the bottom, here it's the highest line together with white's one. But the difference is quantitatively small and black was already close to white and blue there at common, it almost looks like the anomaly with black there is at uncommon.
The major difference is at high power, and again with white's line. White's weak line was at the bottom with blue's one at uncommon, and now it's at the top together with green and black's line. The other colors' weak lines don't show that much of a change. What takes my attention is not much the fact that white and black's weak lines are overlapping (we already saw with red and green at common that it's possible), but that both white's boundary lines at high power get higher going from lower rarities to rare, in a way other colors' boundary lines don't. Why is this? Another unanswered question that joins the list.
Finally, we can look at the intersection coordinates and the area values at rare:
but we have again negative values for green (that means its boundary lines "open up") and absurdly high values for red, and black here too. It looked like it was getting better at uncommon, but at rare we go back to the mess of meaningless values that was at common. This suggests me that this approach is definitely wrong, as I suspected at first when talking about common.
Now let's make the final step up, to see if our observed trends continue.
Oops! We might have some problems here. Let's try to sort this mess out. First, let me state that there are definitely too few points to have a decent data analysis here. But still, there are some things we can notice here nonetheless:
- All colors have boundary lines that "open up" at mythic except red, as confirmed by the intersection coordinates and area values:
This is yet another strike against this method, and it will be the final one for me. Now I acknowledge that it takes me nowhere and I'm abandoning it. Still, there is the fact that at other rarities only green had boundary lines "opening up", while here only red does not have them. Is this meaningful? Probably not, but I can't say I'm sure about it. And if it is, how? And why? Yet more unanswered questions.
- I'm not even attempting an analysis of the weak lines. They are all over the place here.
- At the contrary, it may not be that visible, but all break lines except for blue's one are practically overlapping here. This is somewhat strange: weak lines are all over the place, and break line are much more ordered. I'm taking this as further confirmation that weak lines don't count that much, and break lines are really much more important in determining a color's strength in creatures.
Another consequence of this last fact is: can we unify all break lines at least here at mythic? Is there some sort of unique common boundary for all colors at mythic? To see this, let's try to put all points from all colors' mythic tables in a single table to see if we're able to determine a single break line valid for all colors at mythic. When more than one toughness values from different colors would be in the same cell, I took the greatest one and excluded the others. As blue's break line is the only one that appears separated from the others, which are overlapping, at first I did this excluding blue, then I did it again including blue. I wanted to see if the inclusion of blue made a difference. Also, as the process gives both lines as output at the same time, I still took the weak lines too, but for completeness more than importance. The results are the following (mana costs are shown for green because of a copy and paste in Excel, but they are valid for any other color, just substitute green with it):
EXCLUDING BLUE
INCLUDING BLUE (ALL COLORS)
We see that the inclusion of blue changes nothing, so we can just consider the data including all colors without losing any accuracy. Let's overlap this weak line, which can be considered an average among all colors, and this break line, which is the line defined by the overlapping of all colors' break lines (notice the conceptual difference between those two definitions, which confirms the greater importance of the break line) with the mythic graph including all colors (the two lines coming from the overlapping of all colors are dashed for clarity):
Look at the yellow line! What a nice common break line! (Common in the sense that belongs to all colors, not the rarity). That's the boundary you must not cross when designing mythics of any color.
Finally, now that we've gone through all rarities, I'll show you graphs for each color with all boundary lines of that color at different rarities. I don't think there is much more to see from those than what I've already exposed. Still, I have them and I'm going to put them here for completeness. Line colors correspond to classic Magic rarity colors (black = common, silver/gray = uncommon, gold/orange = rare, red = mythic).
CONCLUSIONS
I know this has been very long. I congratulate you if you're still reading, really! But what can we take out as a lesson from this analysis on all different rarities (except for adding even more unanswered questions to the list)? Well, for starters we saw that the intersection of the boundary lines isn't as meaningful as I hoped. Then, we found confirmation that white has the strongest weenies at all rarities, while showing a peculiar shift of the break line at high power while going up in rarity from common. We also saw that the colors' break lines start spread out at common and become closer at the increasing of rarity, until they overlap almost completely at mythic. This gave us mathematical confirmation that even the colors that can't get strong creatures at common can get them at higher rarities. It also let us determine a single break line valid for all colors at mythic. As a final consideration, I will add that I've come to think that this fact is what defines, or at least reflects, the mechanical difference between the colors: if you want to see how the colors differ in their mechanical essence, than look at their boundaries at common, where the difference among colors is maximum. That difference vanishes when you go up in rarity, nullifying at mythic.
Let me close with greetings and a big "thank you!" to rancored_elf for coming up with the original idea for this statistical analysis, and Doombringer for inspiring me in this research through all existing rarities with his post. I hope this analysis is enough of an answer to him. Be aware that there are still a lot of questions to be answered, so my analysis will definitely continue. But for now... that's all folks!
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I took the above images, scrubbed off the raw data leaving just the break lines, aligned their starting points (where the break line meets the top of the W line on the white graph, the U line on the blue graph, etc), then combined them into one image.
- The top of each break line shows the power of that colour's weenies (mainly 1 and 2 cmc). W } G } R } B } U
- The bottom of each break line shows the power of that colour's fatties (such as 5+ cmc). G } R } B } U } W
- Black and blue may be converging somewhere around the 8-mana mark, but it's hard to tell. Black's break line might need adjustment (see above) as it's quite hard to place due to the 5/1 jutting out at 3B. It's possible that it should be ignored, and considered an outlier design, not one meant to set precedent or change black's identity.
- White's break line is remarkable, showing that white is best at weenies but worst at fatties, "crossing over" all other colours.
- I had previously thought red overtook green in the higher mana costs, but after the detailed analysis it seems like they might be close to tied. Of course, green has much more toughness than red, even if red does almost keep up with green in the power department. Both may get a 7-power creature for 6 mana (as an example), but you can be guaranteed the green one will have about twice as much toughness as the red one.
- The colourless break line doesn't tell me much. Seems like it's very safe, running down the middle of the data, like an average (or slightly less than average). It's not best at anything, but it's also not worst at anything.
I'll do some more analysis of this later on.
Also, thank you VERY much bravelion for all that! You don't have to hide it behind spoilers, bro, post the main stuff at least out in the open. You did a lot of work. I'm going to take my time going over it before commenting specifically. Wow, that's a lot of good stuff
Also, thank you VERY much bravelion for all that! You don't have to hide it behind spoilers, bro, post the main stuff at least out in the open. You did a lot of work. I'm going to take my time going over it before commenting specifically. Wow, that's a lot of good stuff
No problem! Take your time! If you say there's no problem with length, it takes me just a moment to edit the posts and remove spoiler tags. I'm going to do it right now.
Again, I thank you for coming up with the original idea. EDIT: Oops, I wrote the exact contrary of what I meant... I probably would have NEVER thought to do such an analysis myself.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I'll be taking a couple days to digest the recent analysis done by bravelion and myself. Lots of good stuff here.
In the meantime, what's the consensus..... is Etched Monstrosity a 5/5+ for 5? I could see arguments either way but I lean toward "yes".
I think we have to remember that this power/toughness ratios has to fit into what your design is trying to do and the environment it will be played in. You don't just take the largest numbers you can from these precedents and push them. It has to be for a reason.
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
Because we want to. Because finding out where the line between "strong and interesting for constructed" and "inappropriately cheap or big" is can be fun and challenging. Because designing mediocre cards or cards for limited isn't my thing. Actually, we don't need a reason at all, but thanks for your opinion. You've made several spam posts in this thread already. I'm going to ask that you not post in the thread anymore unless it's on topic and supportive (or at least constructive). There are other threads for other topics.
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And so now it's my time to do some data analysis! Seeing the latest discussion on this thread, first let me be as clear as I can about my motivations: I'm not doing this to learn how to make potentially broken custom card designs or something like that, I'm just doing this mostly out of the curiosity to see how the behind-the-scenes mechanisms work and how the pieces are put together to solve the puzzle of designing a card. It's a pure Melvin approach, if you like to say it this way, but after all it reflects how I am, both as a player and as a person, how I think, and how my brain naturally works.
That said, be aware that this is just the first part of my analysis, because, as you will see, there is still a lot to be discussed and understood. As I mentioned multiple times already, I have a scientific background, so I will make a big use of it in this discussion. Data analysis in a chemistry laboratory can be much worse, I can assure you!
Maybe because of this influence, I had a similar but slightly different idea for my analysis. I like rancored_elf's analysis a lot, trying to see where the boundaries are for each color is a wonderful idea, and he did a great job with that. After reading it, my scientific mind naturally asked itself if there was a way to make the following step, which is to find a way to make a quantitative analysis, possibly estimating those boundaries with some equations in a cartesian system, so that we could compare things on equal basis. In the beginning, I didn't know where this quantification approach would have led me, or if it would have worked at all. It was just a way to pass an otherwise boring Sunday night. But in the end I just tried it, and guess what? It kind of worked! And what I'm presenting here is the first batch of its results.
I didn't immediately come up with the final version of my work. At first, I saw that the list practically was an expression of the highest existing toughness as a function of cmc and power. Mathematically, we have a function of two variables, z = f(x,y), where z is the toughness, x the cmc, and y the power. So, my first thought was to plot this function as a surface in a xyz 3D cartesian space. I tried doing that for green, because rancored_elf started his analysis from green too, so I hoped to find some comparable results. I'll cut short: this approach didn't work. I was able to obtain the graph I wanted, but it wasn't readable at all. I just saw a surface with a couple peaks, but it didn't tell me anything useful.
After this first failure, what I did was arranging my data from the common list in a different way. I chose to use the common list because I think that it should be more representative of design trends. Cards that deviate from the norm are usually at higher rarities, so I should be able to exclude most of those deviations using the common list. I will surely do the same work with the complete list in the future, but before getting to that, I wanted to have an idea of what the basic tendencies are, and I think the common list is the best for that purpose.
For each color, I created a table with mana costs on rows and power values in columns. Here I encountered the first problem in this approach: how do I consider quantitatively double colored mana costs? I excluded triple colored mana costs, because if you check my common list there are no cards with those except for Kindercatch. I felt like sacrificing one card for a much greater ease of calculation was a reasonable compromise.
In my article about costing ("The price is right", you can find the link in my signature), I explain that a double colored mana cost 1CC (where C is a colored mana symbol of any color) is worth more than 2C but less than 3C. My solution was to put it exactly in the middle. I have no theoretical reason for doing that, I just had to if I wanted to progress. Let's call it a convention if you prefer. So, 2C is worth 3 mana, 3C is worth 4 mana, and 1CC is worth 3.5 mana. A reminder for those that might not know: here in Italy we use the comma instead of the period for decimal numbers. That means that in all tables and graphs that you're going to see, 3.5 mana will be written as 3,5 because I use the Italian version of Excel. In the written text I'm going to use the English notation with the period, but as the images are screenshots you'll see commas in those.
With this convention established, I went on to create the tables. In the first column you see mana costs, in the second how much mana they are worth (obviously, Excel doesn't naturally know about the Magic mana system, so I had to tell it), and in the following ones the maximum toughness for that mana cost (row) and power (column), if such a value exists. Where it doesn't exist, I left an empty cell. It may sound complicated, but it's just another way to arrange the data from my list, there is nothing new. The results were the following tables, one for each color, where "P" followed by a kind of arrow means "in this row there are the power values":
I colored each cell with a scale going from the lightest color (lower toughness) to the darkest color (higher toughness) to have an immediate visual idea of the distribution of those values. We can already see some interesting things from here:
- In red's table, toughness is never higher than 5. This is coherent with common knowledge that red creatures have much higher power than toughness on average.
- If we compare red and green's tables, we see that they have a very similar shape, and the main if not only difference is that green's table is much darker, which means that on average its creatures get a higher toughness for the same cmc and power. Again, this is coherent with common knowledge: red has a low toughness and green has the biggest creatures under equal conditions.
- In white and blue's tables, there seems to be a "wall" between 3 and 4 power. There are very few or no creatures in those colors that have more than 3 power at common, at any mana cost. A seeming contradiction is with blue's typical Serpents, but those always have a drawback of the "can't attack unless..." kind, so they don't count here. The only difference between white and blue seems to be that blue's shape is somewhat "thinner" than white.
- Black and green seem to have the darkest shapes, which means the highest toughness. They are also the only colors to have toughness values equal or greater than 7 appearing somewhere in their tables. This is also coherent with common knowledge. Maybe one unexpected fact is that white doesn't seem to have that high of an average toughness too.
- As rancored_elf also noted, there is a visible order in creature strength, as seen by how low and right the shape reaches: white and blue are lower than black, which is lower than red and green.
All this was already interesting, but I wanted more. I wanted equations! So I took all the data from each of the previous tables and put it in that many graphs, where I chose to insert converted mana cost (cmc) on the y axis and power values in the x axis, to try to replicate rancored_elf's images with his arrangements of P/T and the marked boundaries. I managed in doing that, but with a caveat: if you want to compare directly the following graphs to rancored_elf's images, you have to reflect them over the x axis. I couldn't avoid that if I didn't want to use negative values of cmc, which I don't want as they have no actual meaning. Then, I took the top and bottom points for each power value and let Excel interpolate them linearly (top and bottom values separately, of course), telling me the equation and the R squared value. I'm not going to explain here what R squared is, if you don't know about it you'll surely find all the definitions and formulas by googling it, but the short version is that it's a statistic indicator that tells us how well the line approximates the given points. A perfect line that crosses exactly all given points has an R squared value of 1. The closest our R squared is to 1, the better the linear approximation is.
The top line, which I drew in dark red, corresponds to the left boundary of rancored_elf's analysis ("SX" is short for "sinistra" which means "left" in Italian). Similarly, the bottom line, which is drawn in blue, corresponds to the right boundary ("DX" is short for "destra", which means "right" as opposed to "left" in Italian). Points that are outside the area between those two lines corresponds to cmc/power combinations that are either too weak (the area above the red line, for example a 1 power creature for 6 mana) or too strong (the area below the blue line, for example a 6 power creature for 1 mana). The results are the following graphs, where the scale of the axis has been kept the same so that they are comparable.
We can see that the approximations are overall very good, there are just a couple cases where the R squared is not very good (0.6 in blue's red line, and 0.85 in black's red line), but all others are above 0.9, which is good. There are even a couple 1's. Many interesting things can already be seen, and how the boundaries change from one color to another is clearly visible. Yet, I made a further step, and I overlaid all the lines in a single graph. What allows me to do this is exactly the fact that now I have equations, so I just have to make Excel plot them all in a single graph. The colors of the lines correspond to the Magic colors. The top and bottom lines for each color should be easily distinguishable.
We can make some other interesting observations from here:
- As common knowledge states, white has indeed the strongest weenies: it has the lowest "DX" line for power lower than 2.
- Green is the only color whose lines appear to "open up" going from low to high power, and its lines also have a much greater space between them compared to the other colors. I'm taking this as confirmation and consequence of the fact that green has the biggest creatures, especially at high cost and power/toughness.
- Blue creatures suck. We knew it already from common knowledge, but seeing how much they suck in these graphs is kind of surprising to me. It's the only color for which we can see the intersection of the lines on the graph area.
- Red and green share the same "DX" line, but they have very different "SX" lines. I have no interpretation yet for this fact, it's just something I noticed.
- Another fact I noticed but I have no interpretation for yet is that red's lines are almost parallel, and this is confirmed by their angular coefficients, which are close: 0.65 and 0.75. (for those that don't know, the angular coefficient of a line is the number coming right before the x in its equation, and it expresses the slope of the line; if two lines have the same angular coefficient they are parallel).
- A last fact I noticed but didn't expect is that white and black have a similar trend: the "DX" are almost overlapping and the "SX" almost parallel (angular coefficients respectively 0.5 and 0.45). It appears that the only big difference between them is that white's common creatures stop at 3 power, while black's ones can have higher power.
Finally, note that in all this reasoning I never took into account the actual toughness values, but just their mere existence for a given mana cost and power. There is certainly progress to be made in this aspect.
Possible future developments:
- Interpret the uninterpreted facts I just talked about.
- Find a way to also consider actual toughness values.
- Make power/toughness curves for a given mana cost, and understand if and how they could be helpful. The mana cost 3B looks particularly promising for this from the tables: it has many power/toughness couples existing and their trend looks good from the sheer numbers.
- Understand if frequency counts and if so how (frequency as in how many creatures exist with that given cmc, power and toughness).
- Understand if the intersection point of each color's two lines can be a somewhat quantitative expression of that color's strength in creatures.
- Understand if it's possible to make a meaningful similar analysis for gold and hybrid costs. My view at this moment is that for both those categories there are not enough values in the list to have an adequate sample size.
And this is the first batch of results, further analysis will follow but I don't know when. I know there is nothing new for now in this, but still I think and hope that having some even approximate way to visualize and quantify the boundaries is an appreciable progress in the analysis. I will definitely continue my work and I'm sure these are not the only results I will present. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through. If not, I understand.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Also the images seem to be broken for me....FIXED ITI apologize. I should of restrained myself and PMed Bravlion rather than posting here.
No need for that.
I am fully supportive of the project. Its a great resource to study the bounds of our precedents. As all magic design needs to be aware of its past this makes for a good reference when making vanilla or near vanilla creatures.
My only worry is that reducing strictly down to numbers (especially in your "filling the holes" graph) risks forgetting the underlying design reasons that the bounds are their in the first place. Red doesn't have a 2/2 for 1R because they can't print it. Its because they don't want to print it because its important for the identity of the color. This is a design reason that keeps the color pie intact and the mechanical identities of the colors unique.
This is why I find Bravelion's data so much more interesting here as you can see the color pie trends in the creatures far more distinctly making it a more useful to demonstrate the design behind the color pie.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I love the data you've collected but disagree with the analysis that you have made for the "filling the holes" section.
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
Thanks! For now I've done the analysis only for common creatures. Expanding it to other rarities is one of the advancements planned for the near future. As I do it we'll see if my data show some divergence. I expect to see at least some more divergence than at common, but for now that's nothing but my own expectation, in no way backed up by actual data. As I wrote, further analysis will certainly follow.
I can see all of the images, can anyone tell us if they also can't see the images? Hopefully we can understand if it's only Doombringer's problem or not. That's a shame because the images are the most interesting part of the analysis in my opinion.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
thinkknow I'm oversensitive to being told "you can't design like that here", or anything remotely like that, because I get it a lot in this forum. There's an attitude of "you're cheating at design because you just want everything to be broken" or something. That's not it at all. I think it takes skill to find that fine line between playably-strong and over-the-top. I like this aspect of design, and it's a creative outlet for me. I know it's not for everybody, and that's okay, but I feel defensive when I get told that my style isn't welcome. I don't like designs that needlessly obsolete something already in print, along with almost all other designers out there. But I DO like finding out where the boundary is, and I think there's value in knowing.I'm not a fan of power creep, but I can see it happening nonetheless. Much like inflation in the economy, it's always there and it's probably bigger than we notice. At some point, it will have major damaging effects on things if left unchecked.
"disagree with the analysis that you have made for the "filling the holes" section"
Cool, well feel free to get into specifics about what can be changed. Keep in mind it's still in rough form, and I share your concern for creating designs that fill holes but damage a colour's identity. I think I wrote about that here in the thread, saying that not every design is meant to see print, it's just an example of the stats that such a creature might have if it DID see print. Black may very well get a 2/1 for B, according to the analysis, but why hasn't it ever been printed? Are they waiting for the right time, or would they just prefer to print 2/2s with drawbacks because that's more black's style? So don't worry, I get what you're saying. And yet.....
Dakmor Rat - B
Creature - Rat (C)
They've been there all along - you just weren't looking.
2/1
BTW bravelion83, more great work! Thank you!
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Hexproof certainly isn't perfect, but it's a good mechanic (not great) as long as it's restricted in the right way.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Other than that, the card fits the power curve of Black's 'good but not outstanding' creatures.
Anyway, here's my rough work on a new way to analyze the master list. This builds off some of my earlier stuff, and bravelion's analysis has touched on similar topics.
I was doing polygons before. The more I look at this stuff, the more obvious it is that the right-hand side of the data is the business side. Each color has a fairly obvious slope that can be drawn (although black has that 5/1 vanilla sticking way out in the midrange, so I'm not completely sure where to draw that one).
Once drawn, the lines tell a few things.
1) The upper-left point of the line shows how powerful that colour's weenies can be. W > G > R > B > U (looks good)
2) The lower-right point of the line shows how powerful that colour's fatties can be. R > G > B > U > W (red may get 6/2 for the same price green gets 5/5, so red fatties have the highest power)
3) The center point of the line shows how powerful that colour's creatures overall can be. G > R > B > W > U (rings true)
4) The line shows (by precedent) what is likely "safe" to be printed without rocking the boat. Designs on the line might be possible, but designs to the right of the line become increasingly unlikely. A 3-power at BB seems inevitable. Blue is very unlikely to get a 4-power creature without drawbacks for under 4 mana. 7 power for 3RR and up looks good. And so on.
5) The left side of the data deals more with bottomheavy (higher toughness) creatures. It seems far less strict, meaning most colours (aside from red) have access to creatures with much higher toughness than power. I won't spend much time analyzing the left side. Creatures aren't played for their toughness much in Magic, except maybe at very low mana costs. Above 3 mana or so, no amount of toughness really changes the playability of a creature, and Wizards' designers don't seem to worry too much about them, judging by their design decisions.
I noticed that my recent in-depth analysis of green helped me decide where to draw the green line above. Perhaps going more in-depth (into higher and more colour-intensive mana costs) for the other colours would be useful, too. I'll do red or white next and see how that goes. I'll re-post green here:
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This is exactly what I'm working on in these days, inspired by one of Doombringer's posts. In a few days I hope to be ready to post an analysis about different rarities.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Yeah, I've been reading your posts on it, and looking forward to more. But what I meant to say was I haven't been putting rarities on the sample cards I come up with. I've just been leaving them out of any designs that come from the data and analysis, except for the Dakmor Rat.
I appreciate your feedback! I'll post an in-depth look at white before I go to bed tonight. Looks like there aren't any surprises there, just another data point or two to confirm the slope we're already seeing on the data.
The master list (both in text form and charted form) is up-to-date. The wording in the OP will need revamping when I post a fresh version of this thread (after some more analysis is finished up).
I'll go through my first few posts on the thread tonight and make them as up-to-date as I can. But a fresh thread (letting this one sink down) is what it'll eventually need
EDIT: Here's white's extended chart.
Observations...
- Vengeful Archon is the only significant data point after opening up the data to costs above 6, and costs involving more than 2 coloured mana (WW). It falls perfectly where one would expect it to, and helps solidify the line drawn down the right side of white's data.
- Like green, white's weenies can be topheavy... in fact white's weenies are the most topheavy of any colour. White's fatties, on the other hand, tend not to favour power at all, and even a 7 power creature costs white 4WWW.
- I've put a strike through some of the stats, indicating instances where it has little impact on white's "identity" as a color, which is more represented by the line down the right side than anything else. They're still useful data, but they don't set white's confines.
- There are a few gaps on the "safe" side of the line that will probably be filled at some point, and are up for grabs for design. Keep in mind, not everything that can be done SHOULD be done. This analysis just shows what it would probably look like.
Loxodon Convert probably isn't white's cheapest possible 4-power creature. Given white's love of topheavy weenies like Accorder Paladin, a 4/1+ or 4/2 for 1WW is no problem.
Spiritpouncer - 1WW
Creature - Spirit
1WW: Spiritpouncer gains first strike, flying and vigilance until end of turn.
4/1
While a 2/2 seems a shoe-in, there's no room for a 3/1 at W. That doesn't mean a 3/1 with a drawback is out of the question, though. A miniscule drawback is sometimes enough to balance out an otherwise overpowered design, such as a 2/2 haste Goblin for R. My 3/1 won't have haste, but 3/1s inherently cost more than 2/2s, so I'll need a larger-than-miniscule drawback.
Curious Lynx - W
Creature - Cat
Whenever Curious Lynx becomes blocked, it gets -3/-0 until end of turn.
3/1
Bit of a nod to Ignoble Soldier there.
And now, something maximizing toughness for 3-power creatures, looks like it could fit nicely in the above image at 1WWW.
Stalwart Hometroops - 1WWW
Creature - Human Soldier
Vigilance
3/8
That would be a nice uncommon. Or knock it up to a rare 3/7 with an additional non-keyword ability (such as "whenever Stalwart Hometroops blocks, it gains lifelink until end of turn").
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Observations:
- Phyrexian Obliterator, Halo Hunter, Hollowborn Barghest, Lord of the Void, and Demon of Death's Gate helped flesh out black's data when I incorporated heavily-black and 6+ mana costs.
- The addition of Halo Hunter and Demon of Death's Gate to the data helped answer the question of where black's line in. Without them, there weren't enough data points to see where to place it. (And of course, the line is subjective and meant as an approximation only.) Now we can see Rotting Fensnake isn't a random anomaly - it actually fits within black's confines (albeit barely).
- Dakmor Rat from above (2/1 for B) now looks even more obvious.
- Black lately has been getting 2/2+ for 1B, and has no problem with topheavy creatures. Why no 3/1 for 1B yet? It's certainly not overpowered and would fit nicely within black's confines. It's probably around the corner.
- Black has no 8 power creatures without drawbacks. 7 and 9, yes, but no 8. Actually that's not true, I've just learned about Fell Shepherd, an 8/6+ for 5BB which isn't eligible for the master list. But it does give some indication of official design philosophy. I think an 8-power monstrosity might cost 4BBB.
Killbloodpain Demon - 4BBB
Creature - Demon
Flying
Sacrifice another creature: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn and Killbloodpain Demon gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
8/8
I'm not 100% sure about black's line ("break line" might be a good term for it, since any stats to the right of the line are "broken"). Green and white's were more obvious. It's entirely possible that the break line could be more of a break curve. I'll carry on and finish up with red and blue, and that will probably give us some clues about black. It's definitely better than it was before I did this latest analysis though
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- Shorecrasher Elemental (3/3+ for UUU) doesn't change blue's identity much, as it just slides right into the data where you'd expect it to. (Side note: I'm noticing that CCC and 3C often produce the same stats. I'll keep an eye on that pattern.)
- Goliath Sphinx (8/7+ for 5UU) helps reveal where blue's break line is. It looks more and more like blue is just a non-artifact colourless colour. By that I mean blue's identity is almost exactly the same as colourless' identity. Making a colorless creature's mana cost bluer doesn't boost the creature's stats. For every other colour, making the cost more coloured (and less colourless) allows the stats to increase, but with blue, the only advantage to being more blue is that you're no longer killed by Shatter. (Of course, blue has cheaper access to keywords like flying that colourless creatures don't.)
- Blue is rarely topheavy but can be VERY bottomheavy. That said, it is still by far the weakest colour for creatures overall. The exception is probably at 1U and 0 power, where blue beats every other colour by having a creature with 6!! toughness, no drawbacks, and an upside. What other colour can match Dragon's Eye Savants? Not that Sidisi's Faithful is any slouch.
- Having 2 more power than toughness seems to be about the limit for blue. A 3/1 for 2U looks likely (a Merfolk Soldier perhaps). 4/2+ for 3U hasn't been done yet, but certainly could, and probably will.
Snapface Turtle - 3U
Creature - Turtle
Whenever Snapface Turtle blocks, it gets -4/+8 until end of turn.
4/2
- Expanding red's data to higher and/or more red-intensive costs revealed Thunderblust, Knollspine Dragon, Tyrant of Discord, and Living Inferno as significant data points.
- Thunderblust adjusted red's break line out slightly, though it turns out it is only about as aggressive as Regathan Firecat.
- Red is great at topheavy creatures, especially at higher mana costs. (People think of red as the most-aggressive weenie colour, but that distinction goes to green and white.)
- 8/4 for 3RRR or 6R looks good. 9/5+ for 5RR and 10 power for 7R (Bearer of the Heavens aside) are easily doable.
Topplespire - 3RRR
Creature - Titan (R)
First strike
Topplespire can't be blocked except by 2 or more creatures.
7/4
- I haven't focused much on colourless in this thread, but the data's there. It's just not that interesting, although it does provide a baseline for stats in the other colours.
- Hexplate Golem and Artisan of Kozilek helped expand the picture, the latter confirming colourless' break line nicely. The break line is also approached by Memnite and Insatiable Souleater (2 cards that need no improvement).
- Notice the gaps along the breakline at 1, 2, and 3. Those will go unfilled, as 1 will never buy you a 2/1, 2 will never buy you a 3/1, and 3 will (probably) never buy you a 4/1.
- There's room for a 6/3+ at 5, and lots of designs to be explored in the 7 and 8 range.
I'm now working on unifying the data and analysis done on "break lines". It will probably replace my discussion of "confines" and polygons in this thread. It's a more complete and detailed model to explain the master list, and to help it hint at potential designs.
.
I've been ignoring it too thus far in my analysis, while including it in my lists. I think I'll include it later. Now in this exact moment I'm writing the second part of my analysis, I think I'm going to post it later today or tomorrow at worst.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
It's green only if you play Commander. And even there, it's not a green card, but a colorless card that you can play in monogreen decks because it has a green color identity. If you don't play Commander (as I don't), it is just a colorless card with a green ability to you. And that puts it among the colorless card, not among the green ones. That's my opinion and that's also why I have it under "colorless" in my list and not "green". I can see a Commander player seeing it as a green card, because for his or her purposes it is, but unfortunately it is not one technically.
In other news, I finished the written part of my second analysis, now I just have to capture, edit, and upload the images, which are a lot as you will see, so it will take some time. Done that, I'll post it here.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
But the master list is about the eternal card pool, not formats, so why treat colorless cards that have a color identity as though they are colorless?
Also, Shipbreaker Kraken is on the list for 4UU, but there isn't a creature for 3UUU despite the existence of Guile and Sphinx of Magosi. Are XCCC creatures not being considered for the master list? (I thought they had been added.)
Have you considered a master master-list that consists only of the best of the best of the best creatures for each cmc regardless of color or lack thereof?
My list is not about the eternal card pool. In fact, in my list I've specified that I'm only looking at Modern legal cards. That's to avoid cards from a long time ago that were designed with different design principles than today's ones. I think that's the case with rancored_elf's list too.
Also, having a color identity and being a color are two very different things, defined differently in the rules. I'm not treating a colorless card with a color identity as though it were colorless, I'm treating it as colorless because it is actually colorless. It also happens to have a non-colorless color identity, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a colorless card because it has no colored mana symbols in its mana cost.
In my original version of the complete list, the one you can find in post #15 of this thread, creatures with triple colored mana costs should be there. I then chose to ignore them because doing so simplified a lot my calculations. I don't exclude to include them again in a future analysis if I find a quantitative way to express mathematically a triple colored mana cost. At the contrary, if I recall correctly, rancored_elf excluded them from his list in the beginning, but now he started adding triple colored mana costs to his deeper analysis in his latest posts.
I don't know if rancored_elf did, but I have not yet. Personally, I'm not that interested in such an analysis right now, also because I'm exactly trying to see and quantify the differences among colors, as you will see as soon as I post part two of my analysis. I think I will post it tomorrow, as now I'm not able to upload all the images I need to. Also, I don't know how useful such analysis would be, as Magic card design is very dependant on color. Anyway, it may be a future development. It just isn't that high in my priorities now.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
My master list cares about what is possible, looking at precedent, for each possible mana cost. When it comes to 4 colorless, the answer is currently 2/4+, 3/3+, or 5/1+. I'm definitely not saying this is the only way to do it, because there are many variations possible. But I have to stay internally consistent in my data collection and analysis, and that's the way I decided to do it, so I'm sticking with it. I encourage any and all variations!
Here are the results of my in-depth look into each colour, with a focus on power.
In the next post, I'll analyze these results in different ways.
.
This is the second part of my analysis. In what follows I will assume you read the first part and thus you are familiar with the method I'm using and the output it produces. If you haven't read the first part yet, I kindly ask you to do so before going on reading this, because here I will build on that.
A premise: I totally support the use of the term "break line" proposed by rancored_elf in one of his last analysis. In addition to that, I'm now proposing the adoption of the term "weak line" to indicate the other line, that rancored_elf chose to ignore for now while I'm still considering it, even if at the end of today's analysis you'll see that I also admit it has a lot less significance than the other one. So, from now on, I'm adopting the terms "break line" for the "DX" line and "weak line" for the "SX" line ("DX" and "SX" are defined in the first part of my analysis if you don't know what I mean). In the many graphs I'm going to show you today, you'll still see "DX" and "SX", because they were made before rancored_elf proposed the use of "break line", but in the text I will use "break line" and "weak line" for the "DX" and "SX" lines respectively. Those names do a great job in explaining what they mean: the "break line" is the line beyond which creatures are too strong (aka "broken"), while the "weak line" is the line beyond which creatures are too weak. If I want to refer to both lines at the same time, I'll call them "boundaries" or "boundary lines".
With that said, now I'm going to briefly touch on a question I left open last time, and then I'll present the progress I made in these last few days.
1. THE OPEN QUESTION
One of the open questions I mentioned at the end of the first part was if the intersection point of the two boundary lines of a color could be a quantitative measure of that color's strength in creatures. I think now I have an answer to that question, and the answer is negative. To explain you why, I'll show you the calculated coordinates of the boundary lines for each color at common (that are the lines shown in the graphs in part one):
Remember that power is on the x axis and cmc on the y axis. While for white, blue, and black the coordinates of the intersection points could make some sense (8 power for 8W in white, 5 power for 6UU in blue, and 7 power for 7B in black are still somewhat plausible values), for the other colors we obtain absurd results: 37 power (red's x) can't exist on a creature! 28 mana (red's y) has never been seen as a cost! And while there are a couple creatures in the game with negative power, -13 power (green's x) just can't be right! And a negative cmc (green's y) doesn't make any sense at all! So, in the end I don't think this approach leads to any good result. That's why I said the answer was negative.
The additional column you see in the table comes from another approach I tried when I discovered the previous one's failure. Inspired by the concept of integral in calculus, I thought about considering the area of the triangle defined by the intersection of the boundary lines and the intersection of each of them with the y axis. The area values of those triangles are what you see in the "area" column. But as you can see, this approach didn't work either: red is certainly not the strongest creature color, and green has a negative area because its triangle is to the left of the y axis instead of being on the right like the others. So for now I have to acknowledge that I haven't been able to find a quantitative method to measure a color's strength in creatures. I don't exclude to make other attempts in the future, but for now I'll dedicate myself to other matters.
2. RARITY ANALYSIS
One of these other matters was brought up by Doombringer in one of his posts in this thread, that inspired me to do an analysis based on all different rarities, aiming to see if the boundaries changed in some way, and if so how, going from common to uncommon, then rare, and finally mythic rare. This is what I've done in the days that have passed since I posted the first part of my analysis, and this will also be the bulk of this second part of it.
For completeness, I'll repost here in the following spoiler the tables and graphs relative to the common rarity, which are exactly the same as those in the first part with just the title of the graphs changed to specify the rarity. For their discussion I also remand you to the first part of my analysis.
WHITE
BLUE
BLACK
RED
GREEN
GRAPHS
Doing the same for the other rarities means to repeat all Gatherer searches separately for each other rarity, obtaining an uncommon list, a rare list, and a mythic list. Then, for each of those lists, the same tables and graphs needed to be built. This was a work that took me multiple days, but I did it. Now I'm going to discuss each rarity separately, presenting you all that data and doing a little discussion for each rarity. At the end, I'll also do some generic considerations summing it all up. The limitations are always the same for all the lists: Modern legal, without drawback, cmc max 6, and max double colored mana cost. Let's go!
THE UNCOMMON LIST
0 0/2 Ornithopter
0 1/1 Memnite
1 0/1 Signal Pest
1 1/1 Chronomaton, Heap Doll, Myr Mindservant
2 0/2 Spincrusher
2 1/1 Coretapper, Epochrasite, Myr Retriever, Necropede, Plague Myr, Sliversmith
2 2/2 Runed Servitor
3 0/3 Kiln Walker
3 1/3 Bottle Gnomes, Brass Squire, Rust Tick
3 2/2 Alloy Myr, Assembly-Worker, Burnished Hart, Myr Galvanizer, Palladium Myr
4 1/5 Dancing Scimitar
4 2/3 Patagia Golem
4 3/3 Dodecapod, Peace Strider, Pierce Strider, Transguild Courier
5 2/2 Clone Shell
5 3/4 Golem Artisan, Mantis Engine, Thran Golem
5 4/4 Stone Golem
5 6/2 Glass Golem
6 2/6 Arachnoid
6 3/5 Auriok Siege Sled, Enatu Golem
6 4/6 Street Sweeper
6 5/4 Phyrexian Hulk
W 0/1 Hada Freeblade
W 1/2 Favored Hoplite
W 2/1 Elite Vanguard, Mardu Woe-Reaper
WW 1/1 Kazandu Blademaster, Phalanx Leader
WW 2/2 Auriok Edgewright, Hand of Honor, Inquisitor Exarch, Knight of Meadowgrain, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Kor Aeronaut, Kor Firewalker, Leonin Relic-Warder, Leonin Skyhunter, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Sigiled Paladin, Soltari Priest, Spectral Rider, Vanguard of Brimaz, Veteran Cavalier, White Knight, White Shield Crusader, Wizened Cenn
1W 0/5 Nyx-Fleece Ram
1W 1/3 Starlight Invoker, Tallowisp
1W 2/2 Ajani's Pridemate, Seeker of the Way, Thraben Heretic, War Priest of Thune
1W 3/1 Accorder Paladin, Wandering Champion
2W 0/2 Kitsune Palliator
2W 1/4 Eidolon of Rhetoric, Gavony Ironwright
2W 2/3 Abzan Falconer, Tethmos High Priest
3W 1/7 Kami of Old Stone
3W 2/4 Auriok Salvagers, Kabira Vindicator, Knight of Obligation, Lightkeeper of Emeria
3W 3/3 Akroan Phalanx, Heliod's Emissary, Prized Elephant
4W 2/5 Ardent Militia, Bazaar Krovod
4W 3/3 Aerie Mystics, Angel of Mercy, Gallows Warden, Guardian of the Gateless, Shepherd of the Lost, Ursine Fylgja
5W 3/3 Auratouched Mage, Constricting Sliver, Duskrider Peregrine, Harrier Griffin, Kjeldoran Gargoyle
5W 4/6 Auriok Survivors
5W 5/4 Nacatl Hunt-Pride
1WW 1/4 Sanctum Guardian
1WW 2/3 Descendant of Kiyomaro
1WW 3/1 Flickerwisp, Geist of the Moors
2WW 1/1 Witch Hunter, Wojek Apothecary
2WW 2/4 Malach of the Dawn
2WW 3/3 Cavalry Master, Glimmerpoint Stag, Lost Auramancers, Meadowboon, Rhox Pikemaster
3WW 1/1 Belfry Spirit
3WW 2/3 Innocence Kami
3WW 3/3 Cloudgoat Ranger, Loxodon Stalwart, Ornitharch, Razor Hippogriff, Shattered Angel
3WW 4/4 Serra Angel, Wandering Graybeard
4WW 1/3 Evangel of Heliod
4WW 3/4 Oathsworn Giant, Paladin of Prahv
4WW 4/4 Goldnight Redeemer, Samurai Enforcers, Wardscale Dragon
U 0/2 Hedron Crab
U 1/1 Cursecatcher, Dakra Mystic, Drowned Rusalka, Jace's Phantasm, Nephalia Smuggler, Sphinx's Herald, Timebender
UU 1/2 Merfolk Assassin, Vedalken Mastermind
1U 0/6 Dragon's Eye Savants
1U 1/3 Augur of Bolas, Incursion Specialist, Meletis Astronomer, Renowned Weaponsmith
1U 2/1 Azure Mage, Riddlesmith, Sejiri Merfolk, Sky Weaver
2U 0/1 Civilized Scholar
2U 1/4 Deceiver Exarch
2U 2/2 Esper Battlemage, Merrow Reejerey, Neurok Transmuter, Razorfin Abolisher, Sage of Fables, Treasure Mage, Trinket Mage, Triton Fortune Hunter, Warden of Evos Isle
3U 1/4 Cryptic Annelid, Soratami Mindsweeper, Turtleshell Changeling, Vedalken Infuser, Viral Drake
3U 2/4 Aerie Worshippers, Azure Drake, Scornful Æther-Lich, Triton Cavalry
3U 3/3 Mistfire Adept, Thassa's Emissary, Voyager Drake
4U 0/5 Talonrend
4U 2/5 Belltower Sphinx, Mindeye Drake
4U 3/3 Adarkar Windform, Battleground Geist
4U 4/3 Air Servant
5U 2/3 Ethereal Usher
5U 4/5 Riverwheel Aerialists
1UU 1/1 Slith Strider
1UU 2/2 Academy Researchers, Callow Jushi, Phantom Warrior
1UU 3/1 Horizon Drake, Latch Seeker
2UU 0/3 Giant Oyster
2UU 1/5 Dream Prowler
2UU 2/5 Scion of Glaciers
2UU 3/4 Water Servant
3UU 1/3 Soul Seizer
3UU 2/2 Riftwing Cloudskate
3UU 3/3 Waterspout Weavers
3UU 4/4 Air Elemental, Murder of Crows, Whitewater Naiads
4UU 3/4 Skyline Predator
4UU 4/4 Jetting Glasskite, Mindscour Dragon
4UU 5/4 Brine Elemental
B 0/2 Qarsi High Priest
B 1/1 Demon's Herald, Dreadwing, Ghost-Lit Stalker, Mardu Shadowspear, Nezumi Shadow-Watcher, Plagued Rusalka, Ruthless Ripper, Tenacious Dead, Thrull Parasite
BB 1/1 Dunerider Outlaw, Slith Bloodletter
BB 2/2 Black Knight, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Hand of Cruelty, Withered Wretch
1B 0/1 Blood Artist
1B 1/3 Gnawing Zombie
1B 2/2 Battle Brawler, Tavern Swindler
2B 1/3 Ashiok's Adept, Corrosive Mentor
2B 2/3 Undercity Informer
2B 3/2 Nirkana Cutthroat
3B 1/2 Escaped Null
3B 2/3 Blightcaster, Mer-Ek Nightblade
3B 3/3 Bog Wraith, Corpse Traders, Erebos's Emissary, Shoreline Salvager, Vampiric Sliver
3B 4/2 Orc Sureshot
4B 1/2 Bitterheart Witch
4B 2/5 Reaper of Sheoldred
4B 3/3 Corpse Connoisseur, Creakwood Ghoul, Gluttonous Zombie, Gristle Grinner, Kemuri-Onna, Primeval Shambler
4B 4/3 Nightfire Giant, Revenant Patriarch
5B 2/4 Netherborn Phalanx
5B 3/4 Thorntooth Witch
5B 4/4 Grixis Slavedriver, Maalfeld Twins
1BB 1/2 Soot Imp
1BB 2/3 Vampire Nighthawk
1BB 3/1 Ogre Marauder
2BB 1/1 Undead Warchief
2BB 2/3 Abyssal Specter
2BB 3/3 Fleshwrither, Howling Banshee, Skinrender, Soul Snuffers
3BB 2/5 Keepsake Gorgon
3BB 3/4 Street Wraith
3BB 4/4 Morkrut Banshee, Sengir Vampire
4BB 2/3 Archetype of Finality
4BB 3/3 Smog Elemental
4BB 4/4 Noxious Dragon, Phyrexian Gargantua
4BB 5/3 Thoughtrender Lamia
4BB 6/3 Corrupted Harvester
R 1/2 Monastery Swiftspear
RR 1/1 Pyre Charger, Slith Firewalker
RR 2/2 Blood Knight, Ember Hauler, Goblin Wardriver
1R 1/2 Atog, Kobold Taskmaster
1R 2/1 Akki Raider, Altac Bloodseeker, Arena Athlete, Crimson Mage, Crimson Muckwader, Embersmith, Firefist Striker, Humble Defector, Lightning Mauler, Rage Weaver, Slavering Nulls, Squealing Devil, Thick-Skinned Goblin, Torch Fiend, War-Name Aspirant, Young Pyromancer
2R 0/1 Cunning Sparkmage
2R 1/3 Chandra's Spitfire, Sparkspitter
2R 2/3 Flamespeaker Adept
2R 3/2 Sulfur Elemental
3R 1/3 Duergar Cave-Guard
3R 2/4 Ceaseless Searblades, Flame-Kin War Scout, Wildfire Emissary
3R 3/3 Hatchet Bully, Kird Chieftain, Oxidda Scrapmelter, Purphoros's Emissary
3R 4/2 Fanatic of Mogis, Vaultbreaker
3R 5/2 Bloodfire Enforcers
4R 1/7 Valakut Fireboar
4R 2/2 Anarchist, Mindclaw Shaman
4R 3/4 Giant Harbinger
4R 4/3 Deathforge Shaman, Wildfire Cerberus
5R 3/3 Fury Sliver, Gang of Devils
5R 4/4 Earth Servant, Markov Warlord
5R 5/4 Rapacious One
5R 6/1 Spitebellows
1RR 1/3 Goblin Artillery, Orcish Artillery
1RR 2/2 Akki Coalflinger, Cunning Bandit
1RR 3/2 Archetype of Aggression, Vulshok Refugee
2RR 2/3 Dragon Whelp
2RR 3/4 Stone Giant
2RR 4/3 Bloodfray Giant
3RR 2/2 Outrage Shaman, Ronin Cliffrider
3RR 3/4 Greater Forgeling
3RR 4/5 Earth Elemental
3RR 5/4 Fire Elemental, Stoneshock Giant
4RR 3/3 Impelled Giant
4RR 4/5 Akoum Boulderfoot, Earthshaker
4RR 5/5 Thunder Brute
4RR 6/5 Ripscale Predator
G 0/3 Treefolk Harbinger
G 1/2 Wasteland Viper
GG 1/1 Slith Predator, Whirling Dervish
GG 2/1 Bassara Tower Archer, Strangleroot Geist
GG 3/3 Kalonian Tusker
1G 1/3 Spellwild Ouphe
1G 2/2 Beastbreaker of Bala Ged, Bramblewood Paragon, Flinthoof Boar, Gatstaf Shepherd, Hamlet Captain, Heir of the Wilds, Kavu Predator, Loam Dweller, Riftsweeper, Voracious Wurm, Wolf-Skull Shaman
1G 3/1 Brushstrider, Temur Charger
2G 1/2 Elvish Harbinger, Foratog, Ivy Dancer, Lambholt Elder, Oak Street Innkeeper, Tajuru Archer
2G 2/3 Sacellum Archers, Trophy Hunter, Tuskguard Captain
3G 1/5 Tangle Angler
3G 2/4 Graverobber Spider, Nullmage Shepherd
3G 3/4 Karplusan Strider, Sultai Flayer
3G 4/3 Crowned Ceratok
3G 5/2 Summit Apes
4G 1/5 Steam Spitter
4G 2/8 Jaddi Lifestrider
4G 3/4 Battlefront Krushok, Dowsing Shaman
4G 4/5 Rust Scarab, Village Survivors
5G 3/3 Brutalizer Exarch
5G 4/4 Gravetiller Wurm
5G 5/5 Pheres-Band Raiders
1GG 2/3 Kashi-Tribe Elite
1GG 3/3 Wolfir Avenger
2GG 1/1 Lumberknot
2GG 3/3 Rootrunner, Swirling Spriggan, Ulvenwald Mystics
2GG 4/4 Sporesower Thallid
3GG 2/4 Elvish Bard, Sylvan Basilisk
3GG 3/5 Acid Web Spider, Spitting Spider
3GG 4/5 Hollowhenge Scavenger, Nessian Game Warden
3GG 5/5 Pine Walker, Silverback Ape
4GG 3/4 Orbweaver Kumo, Spinebiter, Tangle Spider
4GG 4/6 Fangren Pathcutter, Orchard Warden
4GG 5/5 Nemesis of Mortals
4GG 6/5 Ancient Silverback
4GG 7/7 Vorstclaw
WHITE
BLUE
BLACK
RED
GREEN
GRAPHS
Here at uncommon we see a very similar trend to the one we've already seen at common. Let's start from the break line ("DX", the one lower in the graphs). We confirm that the lowest break line for power less than 2 is the white one, coherently with the known fact that the best weenies are white, and that going up on the y axis we meet blue and black first and then red and green. That is supposed to reflect the order of the colors in the strength of their weenies. The results seem strange: white is the strongest, and that's right, but blue and black getting stronger weenies at common and uncommon than red and green looks weird. For red it could be rationalized because of its low toughness, but we know it's not it for real, because we haven't analyzed the actual toughness values yet, but still let's accept that interpretation for now. For green, it could be rationalized saying that as it gets the biggest creatures at higher mana costs, having weaker creatures at low mana costs can be a balancing factor. But here there are some things to note:
- First, these are just rationalizations. They are just attempts to explain an observation "a posteriori" as we say in Italian (and according to Google, in English too, please correct me if I'm wrong), which means we're trying to invent an explanation to match with the given observed data rather than searching data to confirm an already existing theoretical idea.
- Second, and more importantly, note that at both common and uncommon, this trend changes as soon as you reach power 1. Between power 1 and 2 the order is the following: white is still the strongest (lowest break line), followed by red and green, which are then followed by blue and black. This makes much more sense in Magic's common knowledge, so we can take it as a confirmation of it without further rationalization.
- Above power 2, the order changes again: red and green become the strongest colors, followed by white and black, with blue last in the distance. Again, this makes sense with common knowledge. Remember that we're still not taking into account the actual toughness values, so red and green appear closer than they probably actually are, because when you consider toughness values, red becomes much weaker than green, as confirmed by the fact that its tables at both rarities are much lighter than green's ones, which are actually the darkest ones overall together with black. This means that on average green and black are the color with the highest toughness, and that's also coherent with common knowledge. We had already seen much of this in the first part of my analysis about common, here we see that this all applies at uncommon too. But...
- ...lastly, we can note a difference: at high power, the break lines of the different colors are much closer at uncommon than at common, and actually quite much. This could be completely meaningless, due to a coincidence or a slightly different distribution of values, or it can actually have some meaning and reflect a much greater variance at common rather than uncommon in creatures with high power. I still haven't come to a definitive conclusion about this.
- About the weak lines ("SX", higher lines in the graphs), we can notice that the trend is almost the same, except for black. Black changes quite a lot going up from common to uncommon. The order at low power (you can see easily see it looking at the intersections of the weak lines with the y axis) goes from green and red, then black together with white and blue at common to green, then black is here together with red, then white and blue by themselves at uncommon. At high power (look at the other end of the weak lines), in common we have blue, then black as the second worst color, then white and red, then a huge gap with green after that as the most inclusive color by far, in the sense that it includes much more combinations of cmc/power in its possible range compared to all other colors. At uncommon, we have white joining blue, then after a little gap there's red, then there is the huge gap and after that green (as expected), but also black! Black passes from being the second lowest to being the highest, with a weak line parallel to green but even higher. Why is there this big of a shift with black going up in rarity? Why are green and black's weak lines parallel, as red and green's break lines also are? I don't have any explanation right now. These will join the other open questions for now.
- Finally, let's look at the intersection coordinates and area values for uncommon:
We can see that no color has negative values here at uncommon, which means that all colors have boundary lines that "open up" going from low to high power. This happened also at common, except for green. We'll talk again about this later, for now we'll just note it.
We can also see that area values follow the same trend as the abscissa of the intersection points, as we could have expected after all. Here the values seem to reflect much better the relative strength of the colors: green as the best creature color, followed by black, red, white, and blue. Green as the best and blue as the worst make a lot of sense. It looks strange to see white this low. About red we have to notice again that I'm still not considering actual toughness values, which favors red, that is the weakest colors in toughness. Black in the middle makes sense, but it can look strange seeing it as the second color after green.
This concludes for now my analysis about uncommon. Let's go up another step, to see if the trends we noticed are confirmed.
THE RARE LIST
0 (none existing)
1 1/1 Hex Parasite
2 0/4 Spellskite
2 1/3 Painter's Servant
2 2/1 Phyrexian Revoker
3 1/4 Myr Welder
3 2/2 Adaptive Automaton, Etched Champion, Shimmer Myr
4 0/4 Summoner's Egg
4 1/5 Dancing Scimitar, Silent Arbiter
4 2/2 Lodestone Myr, Solemn Simulacrum
4 4/1 Bronze Bombshell
5 0/1 Stuffy Doll
5 1/1 Creepy Doll
5 3/5 Kuldotha Forgemaster
6 2/4 Duplicant
6 3/4 Gemini Engine
6 5/5 Steel Hellkite, Thopter Assembly
6 6/6 Scuttling Doom Engine
W 1/2 Herald of Anafenza
W 2/1 Savannah Lions, Soldier of the Pantheon
WW 1/1 Auriok Champion
WW 2/2 Armament Master, Elite Inquisitor, Grand Abolisher, Knight of the White Orchid, Precinct Captain, Puresteel Paladin, True Believer
1W 0/2 Kor Spiritdancer
1W 1/2 Auratog
1W 2/2 Ethersworn Canonist, Hero of Iroas, Leonin Arbiter, Leonin Shikari, Master of Pearls
1W 3/1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
2W 0/3 Hedron-Field Purists
2W 1/1 Blade Splicer, Intrepid Hero, Mirror Entity, Twilight Drover
2W 2/3 Kabira Evangel
2W 3/3 Frontline Medic
3W 1/5 Oracle's Attendants, Rhox Faithmender
3W 2/5 Leonin Abunas
3W 3/4 High Sentinels of Arashin, Restoration Angel
4W 1/4 Master Healer
4W 2/2 Knight-Captain of Eos
4W 4/4 Angel of Flight Alabaster
5W 2/5 Weathered Bodyguards
5W 3/3 Elite Archers
5W 5/5 Chronosavant, Requiem Angel
1WW 0/2 Mesa Enchantress
1WW 1/4 Order of Whiteclay
1WW 2/2 Fabled Hero, Field Marshal, Fiendslayer Paladin, Gideon's Avenger, Knight Exemplar, Mirran Crusader, Paladin en-Vec, Silverblade Paladin, Thraben Doomsayer
2WW 0/3 Magus of the Moat
2WW 1/3 Steelshaper Apprentice
2WW 2/10 Indomitable Ancients
2WW 3/5 Hundred-Handed One
3WW 2/5 Kjeldoran Royal Guard
3WW 3/4 Archon of Redemption, Battletide Alchemist
3WW 4/4 Archon of Justice, Battlegrace Angel, Celestial Archon, Lightwielder Paladin, Scion of Vitu-Ghazi, Stonehewer Giant, World Queller
4WW 2/7 Palisade Giant
4WW 3/3 Captain of the Watch
4WW 4/5 Adarkar Valkyrie, Spirit of the Hearth, Sunblast Angel
4WW 5/7 Deathless Angel
U 1/1 Cosi's Trickster, Galerider Sliver, Hypnotic Siren, Realmwright
UU 2/2 Coralhelm Commander, Grimoire Thief, Lord of Atlantis, Lord of the Unreal, Master of the Pearl Trident, Tidebinder Mage
1U 0/1 Magus of the Bazaar, Renegade Doppelganger
1U 1/3 Chief Engineer
1U 2/1 Battlefield Thaumaturge, Snapcaster Mage, Void Stalker
2U 1/3 Skill Borrower
2U 2/3 Captain of the Mists, Daring Thief, Jeskai Infiltrator, Meletis Charlatan
3U 1/4 Knacksaw Clique
3U 2/2 Glen Elendra Archmage, Lumengrid Augur
3U 3/3 Chronozoa, Kheru Spellsnatcher
3U 4/2 Undead Alchemist
4U 1/5 Scalpelexis
4U 2/2 Psionic Sliver
4U 3/3 Perplexing Chimera
5U (none existing)
1UU 0/1 Simic Manipulator
1UU 1/2 Fatespinner
1UU 2/3 Echo Mage
2UU 0/2 Vedalken Archmage
2UU 1/1 Archivist
2UU 2/3 Rootwater Matriarch
2UU 3/3 Dungeon Geists, Slithermuse
2UU 4/3 Argent Sphinx
3UU 3/5 Prognostic Sphinx, Sphinx of Lost Truths
3UU 4/4 Djinn of Wishes, Lone Revenant, Master of Predicaments, Serra Sphinx
4UU 1/1 Draining Whelk
4UU 4/5 Ætherling, Arbiter of the Ideal, Sage-Eye Avengers
4UU 5/6 Mahamoti Djinn, Sphinx of the Chimes, Thousand Winds
4UU 6/6 Shipbreaker Kraken
B 0/1 Will-o'-the-Wisp
B 1/1 Cruel Sadist, Guul Draz Assassin, Kederekt Parasite, Knucklebone Witch, Mortician Beetle
BB 1/1 Nether Traitor
BB 2/2 Kalastria Highborn, Scarblade Elite
1B 1/2 Skirsdag High Priest
1B 2/2 Pain Seer
1B 3/1 Oona's Prowler
2B 0/2 Agadeem Occultist
2B 2/2 Cunning Lethemancer, Dark Impostor, Doomed Necromancer, Mad Auntie, Moriok Rigger, Syphon Sliver, Xathrid Necromancer
2B 3/2 Grim Haruspex, Mardu Strike Leader
3B 1/3 Bogbrew Witch
3B 2/2 Bala Ged Thief, Crypt Ghast, Sengir Autocrat
3B 3/4 Fate Unraveler
3B 4/3 Magus of the Abyss
4B 0/5 Mephitic Ooze
4B 1/1 Vermiculos
4B 3/5 Fendeep Summoner
4B 4/6 Doomwake Giant
5B 4/4 Tar Fiend
1BB 1/4 Necroskitter
1BB 2/2 Abyssal Nocturnus, Captivating Vampire, Cemetery Reaper, Death Baron, Hypnotic Specter, Lord of the Undead, Phyrexian Crusader
1BB 3/2 Agent of the Fates
2BB 0/4 Unliving Psychopath
2BB 2/2 Guul Draz Specter, Shimian Specter, Thought Gorger
2BB 3/3 Bloodline Keeper, Eastern Paladin, Graveborn Muse, Sangromancer, Western Paladin
2BB 4/3 Liliana's Reaver, Mindslicer, Necrotic Ooze
3BB 3/5 Dread Slaver
3BB 4/4 Malakir Bloodwitch, Phyrexian Plaguelord, Ravenous Demon, Sengir Nosferatu
3BB 5/4 Archfiend of Depravity, Bloodgift Demon
4BB 2/7 Pontiff of Blight
4BB 3/4 Mephidross Vampire
4BB 4/5 Void Maw
4BB 5/5 Extractor Demon, Harvester of Souls
4BB 6/4 Salvage Titan
R 1/1 Bloodhall Ooze, Grim Lavamancer, Legion Loyalist, Magus of the Scroll, Mogg Sentry, Spikeshot Elder, Stromkirk Noble
R 2/1 Firedrinker Satyr
RR 2/2 Ash Zealot, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Stigma Lasher
1R 1/1 Bazaar Trader, Orcish Librarian, Satyr Firedancer
1R 2/1 Goblin Diplomats, Jeering Instigator, Tunnel Ignus
2R 2/2 Incandescent Soulstoke, Magus of the Moon, Sedge Sliver, Taurean Mauler
2R 3/1 Pyrewild Shaman
3R 0/3 Rukh Egg
3R 1/1 Akki Lavarunner
3R 2/3 Instigator Gang
3R 3/4 Felhide Spiritbinder
3R 4/2 Firewing Phoenix
3R 5/2 Vengeful Firebrand
4R 0/1 Fortune Thief
4R 2/2 Molten Firebird, Shard Phoenix, Thorncaster Sliver, Vulshok Battlemaster
4R 3/3 Flamerush Rider, Kazuul Warlord, Wrecking Ogre, Zealous Conscripts
5R 4/4 Bloodshot Cyclops, Charmbreaker Devils
5R 5/6 Titan of Eternal Fire
1RR 1/1 Markov Blademaster
1RR 2/3 Rageblood Shaman
1RR 3/3 Countryside Crusher
2RR 2/2 Hound of Griselbrand, Stormscale Anarch
2RR 3/4 Goblin Razerunners
2RR 4/5 Ember Swallower
3RR 2/2 Falkenrath Marauders, Siege-Gang Commander
3RR 3/3 Caldera Hellion, Dragon-Style Twins, Furystoke Giant, Galvanoth, Karplusan Yeti, Magma Phoenix, Torchling
3RR 4/5 Arc-Slogger
4RR 3/4 Megatog
4RR 4/4 Pardic Dragon, Two-Headed Dragon
4RR 5/5 Conquering Manticore, Flameblast Dragon, Hellkite Charger, Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Magus of the Arena, Shivan Dragon
4RR 6/5 Chaos Imps
G 0/1 Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch
G 1/2 Magus of the Candelabra
GG 1/1 Magus of the Library
GG 2/1 Viridian Zealot
1G 0/2 Utopia Tree
1G 1/2 Gyre Sage
1G 2/2 Cylian Sunsinger, Fauna Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Skylasher
2G 0/1 Somberwald Sage
2G 1/1 Manaplasm, Reverent Hunter, Wild Beastmaster, Wood Elves
2G 2/3 Elder of Laurels
2G 3/2 Loaming Shaman
3G 1/3 Keeper of Progenitus
3G 2/2 Fungus Sliver, Fungusaur, Immaculate Magistrate, Oracle of Mul Daya
3G 3/3 Pheres-Band Warchief
3G 5/3 Cliffrunner Behemoth
4G 2/4 Greatbow Doyen
4G 3/4 Kessig Cagebreakers
4G 4/6 Timber Protector
4G 5/3 Thragtusk
5G 3/3 Megantic Sliver
5G 4/5 Quagnoth
5G 5/7 Arachnus Spinner
1GG 0/2 Verduran Enchantress
1GG 1/3 Ohran Viper
1GG 2/4 Courser of Kruphix
1GG 3/3 Great Sable Stag, Witchstalker
1GG 4/2 Boon Satyr
2GG 2/2 Eidolon of Blossoms
2GG 3/5 Leaf-Crowned Elder
2GG 4/4 Brooding Saurian, Chameleon Colossus, Ezuri's Brigade, Obstinate Baloth, Wolfbriar Elemental
2GG 5/5 Deadbridge Goliath
3GG 2/7 Silklash Spider
3GG 3/3 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid, Ursapine
3GG 4/6 Molder Slug
3GG 5/5 Ant Queen
4GG 4/5 Primordial Sage, Temur War Shaman
4GG 5/5 Paleoloth, Rhox
4GG 6/6 Nessian Wilds Ravager, Soul of the Harvest
4GG 7/7 Hydra Broodmaster
WHITE
BLUE
BLACK
RED
GREEN
GRAPHS
Let's start again from the break line. We see again the change at power 2 we're used to by now: for power less than 2 white is the strongest color, for power more than 2 it's one of the weakest ones. But there is a little observation to make though: here for power less than 2 all the other colors are much closer to one another, and become spread out when power increases. In fact, at high power, we have red and green's break lines practically overlapping, then black right in the middle, then white and blue together as the weakest colors (highest break line). It's interesting to note the shift of white's break line: while all the other colors kept the same relative order, white starts being overlapping with black's break line at common, right between blue and black's break lines at uncommon, and here at rare it gets even worse than blue's break line, looking like the absolute weakest color at high power. It's a shift we don't observe in all other colors. Why is it so? Another question that joins the list of unanswered ones.
We also keep seeing the break lines of the different colors getting closer to one another. We already saw that at uncommon, but we see it even more at rare. That's a sign that the difference in creature strength decreases when rarity increases. This is mathematical proof of the fact that even the colors that aren't allowed to have strong creatures at common can get them at higher rarities. This is an expected discovery, but now I can prove it mathematically and quantify it in graphs! I see this as one of the most concrete results I've obtained until now in this analysis.
Let's also take a look at the weak lines. Here we see a similar trend to what we've seen talking about uncommon, but with two differences, one minor and one major. The minor difference is black's weak line at low power (check its intersection with the y axis): at uncommon it was sharing red's place as second from the bottom, here it's the highest line together with white's one. But the difference is quantitatively small and black was already close to white and blue there at common, it almost looks like the anomaly with black there is at uncommon.
The major difference is at high power, and again with white's line. White's weak line was at the bottom with blue's one at uncommon, and now it's at the top together with green and black's line. The other colors' weak lines don't show that much of a change. What takes my attention is not much the fact that white and black's weak lines are overlapping (we already saw with red and green at common that it's possible), but that both white's boundary lines at high power get higher going from lower rarities to rare, in a way other colors' boundary lines don't. Why is this? Another unanswered question that joins the list.
Finally, we can look at the intersection coordinates and the area values at rare:
but we have again negative values for green (that means its boundary lines "open up") and absurdly high values for red, and black here too. It looked like it was getting better at uncommon, but at rare we go back to the mess of meaningless values that was at common. This suggests me that this approach is definitely wrong, as I suspected at first when talking about common.
Now let's make the final step up, to see if our observed trends continue.
THE MYTHIC LIST
0 (none existing)
1 (none existing)
2 (none existing)
3 (none existing)
4 (none existing)
5 (none existing)
6 6/6 Soul of New Phyrexia, Wurmcoil Engine
W (none existing)
WW (none existing)
1W 2/2 Soulfire Grand Master
2W 2/2 Monastery Mentor
3W (none existing)
4W (none existing)
5W 4/4 Mirror-Sigil Sergeant
1WW 3/3 Transcendent Master
2WW 3/4 Hero of Bladehold
2WW 4/4 Indomitable Archangel
3WW 3/4 Archangel of Thune, Wingmate Roc
3WW 5/5 Baneslayer Angel
4WW 4/6 Felidar Sovereign
4WW 6/6 Soul of Theros, Sun Titan
U (none existing)
UU (none existing)
1U 1/3 Lighthouse Chronologist
2U (none existing)
3U 2/1 Master of Waves
4U 3/5 Torrent Elemental
4U 4/4 Ethersworn Adjudicator
5U (none existing)
1UU (none existing)
2UU 3/3 Misthollow Griffin
3UU 1/1 Beguiler of Wills
3UU 5/1 Mirror-Mad Phantasm
4UU 4/6 Consecrated Sphinx
4UU 6/6 Frost Titan, Soul of Ravnica
B (none existing)
BB (none existing)
1B 2/1 Dark Confidant (taking it from its mythic printing in MMA to have enough points)
2B (none existing)
3B 3/3 Brutal Hordechief
4B (none existing)
5B (none existing)
1BB (none existing)
2BB (none existing)
3BB 3/3 Bloodlord of Vaasgoth
4BB 4/4 Champion of Stray Souls, Nirkana Revenant
4BB 6/6 Grave Titan, Soul of Innistrad
R 1/1 Dragonmaster Outcast
RR 1/1 Warren Instigator
RR 2/2 Kargan Dragonlord
1R (none existing)
2R (none existing)
3R 4/2 Shaman of the Great Hunt
4R (none existing)
5R (none existing)
1RR 1/3 Prophetic Flamespeaker
2RR 3/3 Flame-Wreathed Phoenix
2RR 4/2 Hero of Oxid Ridge
3RR 4/4 Stormbreath Dragon
3RR 5/5 Thundermaw Hellkite
4RR 6/6 Inferno Titan, Soul of Shandalar
G 1/1 Warden of the First Tree
GG (none existing)
1G 2/1 Lotus Cobra
2G (none existing)
3G (none existing)
4G (none existing)
5G (none existing)
1GG (none existing)
2GG 3/3 Master of the Wild Hunt
2GG 4/3 Vengevine
3GG 4/4 Thornling, Whisperwood Elemental
4GG 6/6 Primeval Titan, Rampaging Baloths, Soul of Zendikar
WHITE
BLUE
BLACK
RED
GREEN
GRAPHS
Oops! We might have some problems here. Let's try to sort this mess out. First, let me state that there are definitely too few points to have a decent data analysis here. But still, there are some things we can notice here nonetheless:
- All colors have boundary lines that "open up" at mythic except red, as confirmed by the intersection coordinates and area values:
This is yet another strike against this method, and it will be the final one for me. Now I acknowledge that it takes me nowhere and I'm abandoning it. Still, there is the fact that at other rarities only green had boundary lines "opening up", while here only red does not have them. Is this meaningful? Probably not, but I can't say I'm sure about it. And if it is, how? And why? Yet more unanswered questions.
- I'm not even attempting an analysis of the weak lines. They are all over the place here.
- At the contrary, it may not be that visible, but all break lines except for blue's one are practically overlapping here. This is somewhat strange: weak lines are all over the place, and break line are much more ordered. I'm taking this as further confirmation that weak lines don't count that much, and break lines are really much more important in determining a color's strength in creatures.
Another consequence of this last fact is: can we unify all break lines at least here at mythic? Is there some sort of unique common boundary for all colors at mythic? To see this, let's try to put all points from all colors' mythic tables in a single table to see if we're able to determine a single break line valid for all colors at mythic. When more than one toughness values from different colors would be in the same cell, I took the greatest one and excluded the others. As blue's break line is the only one that appears separated from the others, which are overlapping, at first I did this excluding blue, then I did it again including blue. I wanted to see if the inclusion of blue made a difference. Also, as the process gives both lines as output at the same time, I still took the weak lines too, but for completeness more than importance. The results are the following (mana costs are shown for green because of a copy and paste in Excel, but they are valid for any other color, just substitute green with it):
EXCLUDING BLUE
INCLUDING BLUE (ALL COLORS)
We see that the inclusion of blue changes nothing, so we can just consider the data including all colors without losing any accuracy. Let's overlap this weak line, which can be considered an average among all colors, and this break line, which is the line defined by the overlapping of all colors' break lines (notice the conceptual difference between those two definitions, which confirms the greater importance of the break line) with the mythic graph including all colors (the two lines coming from the overlapping of all colors are dashed for clarity):
Look at the yellow line! What a nice common break line! (Common in the sense that belongs to all colors, not the rarity). That's the boundary you must not cross when designing mythics of any color.
Finally, now that we've gone through all rarities, I'll show you graphs for each color with all boundary lines of that color at different rarities. I don't think there is much more to see from those than what I've already exposed. Still, I have them and I'm going to put them here for completeness. Line colors correspond to classic Magic rarity colors (black = common, silver/gray = uncommon, gold/orange = rare, red = mythic).
CONCLUSIONS
I know this has been very long. I congratulate you if you're still reading, really! But what can we take out as a lesson from this analysis on all different rarities (except for adding even more unanswered questions to the list)? Well, for starters we saw that the intersection of the boundary lines isn't as meaningful as I hoped. Then, we found confirmation that white has the strongest weenies at all rarities, while showing a peculiar shift of the break line at high power while going up in rarity from common. We also saw that the colors' break lines start spread out at common and become closer at the increasing of rarity, until they overlap almost completely at mythic. This gave us mathematical confirmation that even the colors that can't get strong creatures at common can get them at higher rarities. It also let us determine a single break line valid for all colors at mythic. As a final consideration, I will add that I've come to think that this fact is what defines, or at least reflects, the mechanical difference between the colors: if you want to see how the colors differ in their mechanical essence, than look at their boundaries at common, where the difference among colors is maximum. That difference vanishes when you go up in rarity, nullifying at mythic.
Let me close with greetings and a big "thank you!" to rancored_elf for coming up with the original idea for this statistical analysis, and Doombringer for inspiring me in this research through all existing rarities with his post. I hope this analysis is enough of an answer to him. Be aware that there are still a lot of questions to be answered, so my analysis will definitely continue. But for now... that's all folks!
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
- The top of each break line shows the power of that colour's weenies (mainly 1 and 2 cmc). W } G } R } B } U
- The bottom of each break line shows the power of that colour's fatties (such as 5+ cmc). G } R } B } U } W
- Black and blue may be converging somewhere around the 8-mana mark, but it's hard to tell. Black's break line might need adjustment (see above) as it's quite hard to place due to the 5/1 jutting out at 3B. It's possible that it should be ignored, and considered an outlier design, not one meant to set precedent or change black's identity.
- White's break line is remarkable, showing that white is best at weenies but worst at fatties, "crossing over" all other colours.
- I had previously thought red overtook green in the higher mana costs, but after the detailed analysis it seems like they might be close to tied. Of course, green has much more toughness than red, even if red does almost keep up with green in the power department. Both may get a 7-power creature for 6 mana (as an example), but you can be guaranteed the green one will have about twice as much toughness as the red one.
- The colourless break line doesn't tell me much. Seems like it's very safe, running down the middle of the data, like an average (or slightly less than average). It's not best at anything, but it's also not worst at anything.
I'll do some more analysis of this later on.
Also, thank you VERY much bravelion for all that! You don't have to hide it behind spoilers, bro, post the main stuff at least out in the open. You did a lot of work. I'm going to take my time going over it before commenting specifically. Wow, that's a lot of good stuff
.
No problem! Take your time! If you say there's no problem with length, it takes me just a moment to edit the posts and remove spoiler tags. I'm going to do it right now.
Again, I thank you for coming up with the original idea. EDIT: Oops, I wrote the exact contrary of what I meant... I probably would have NEVER thought to do such an analysis myself.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
In the meantime, what's the consensus..... is Etched Monstrosity a 5/5+ for 5? I could see arguments either way but I lean toward "yes".
.