I find it hard to believe that people can't evaluate most of the conspiracies in their head. Doubling an instant or sorcery, playing a card for any color mana, getting an extra +1/+1 counter, costing less, etc are all easy to imagine applied to the best or worst cards in your cube.
Well, of course i can tell if the card is good or not, but rank the card in a top 20 list? Without any testing, not even once? Sorry but i probably wouldnt be accurate so i rather not rank them, dont you think?
If you aren't going to include them at all in your top 20 even if you know that they are powerful enough to be on that list then how can you argue that your list is any more accurate than if they were included but in the wrong spots?
I have no experience with those cards at all so i thought i rather not rank them, if my list is not accurate because i didnt include them, well, just dont count my votes, no worries
This should not be the result of people voting. The voting rules should make it so that the end result is as accurate as possible and people should feel good with their own vote and should not be annoyed with other peoples vote.
There should not be an elitist, group think feel about the vote. But it should be clear to everybody how they should vote. If we vote for power, everybody should try to rate them, even those with unpowered cubes. With un cards and conspiracies this should also be the case, but these are often harder to rate for people who don't play with them. I just forgot to vote on un cards, because I don't know these cards at all. I would have to read the entire list of these sets.
Making it so that people are voting for the same cards is one way to make this system better. What Lucidvision proposes is another option, but the finer details of that should be written by someone with a solid background in statistics.
I can't find a function that gives a greater emphasis to culling out lower values than higher ones, but I think a trimmed mean with ignoring the highest 2 and lowest 2 values is superior to a normal mean.
The excel function would be TRIMMEAN(RANGE,.1)
Where range is like E1:E20 or whatever.
It would ignore the top 10% of values and the bottom 10%.
Although, I recommend using the MEAN function and manually changing the range to ignore the bottom 2-3 and top 1. Think the unreasonable outliers are biased on the downside more than the upside.
I'd be interested to see the differences in the lists doing them the traditional way and doing them the way you describe above. Is there a way to try that out with the blue results and see what would change when the outliers are wrangled in?
Not necessarily because of better/worse, but just to see the differences in the results.
With the quick and dirty solution of trimming 2 off the top and bottom... Surprisingly few changes! Thought it would make a bigger difference. I expect it to make a bigger difference in colorless voting.
I misunderstood the formula earlier too, trimmean(RANGE,.2) trims 10% off top/bottom, not .1.
Here's new rankings of the changed cards, and what cards they swapped positioned with
Blue: Mana Drain #4 <-> Tinker #5
Red: Inferno Titan #9 <-> Young Pyromancer #10 Daretti Scrap Servant #18 <-> Sarkhan #19
Black: Mind Twist #1 <-> Recurring nightmare #2 Thoughtseize #13<-> Imperial Seal #14
White: Hero of Bladehold #9 <-> Wrath of god #10 Brimaz #16<-> Oblivion Ring #17 Monastary mentor #18 <-> Moat #19
Green: Fauna Shaman #10 <-> Eureka #11
If it means anything, I agree with 7/9 of the changes in ranking
Thanks for putting in the time and effort on that! Interesting information indeed. I think it makes a couple of important swaps, but the data is largely the same. Very cool.
I find it hard to believe that people can't evaluate most of the conspiracies in their head. Doubling an instant or sorcery, playing a card for any color mana, getting an extra +1/+1 counter, costing less, etc are all easy to imagine applied to the best or worst cards in your cube.
FWIW, I didn't vote on them either. Part of that was not really knowing how to evaluate them in a vacuum with no experience and part of that was a simple dislike of the cards and how they affect the game. To be completely honest, I don't know that I'd pick them that highly if I did see them in a draft. I feel as though I'd probably pass them based solely on these same reasons.
I find it hard to believe that people can't evaluate most of the conspiracies in their head. Doubling an instant or sorcery, playing a card for any color mana, getting an extra +1/+1 counter, costing less, etc are all easy to imagine applied to the best or worst cards in your cube.
FWIW, I didn't vote on them either. Part of that was not really knowing how to evaluate them in a vacuum with no experience and part of that was a simple dislike of the cards and how they affect the game. To be completely honest, I don't know that I'd pick them that highly if I did see them in a draft. I feel as though I'd probably pass them based solely on these same reasons.
You had mentioned this earlier in a different thread and I thought it was funny. Basically saying "yeah, I understand the rules but I don't care enough to follow them". What is the point of voting at all then if you aren't going to vote according to the guidelines. I don't want to be a stick in the mud or a stickler for what is basically a small project on a hobby forum but it just makes the results mean less when people are voting for different reasons than the intention of the project.
Your comments about not picking conspiracy cards in a draft due to your dislike of how they affect the game is like someone passing power in a power draft because they prefer unpowered cubes. Please don't take it personally but I just don't understand the point in doing this if people are going to skew the votes by voting for a different set of criteria then what was asked for.
I'm a little surprised to see most people rank the other Swords higher than Feast and Famine (except for Fire and Ice of course). I always thought Feast and Famine was the clear #2. Though I suppose I can see why Body and Mind gets ranked higher due to feel bads... It's interesting because I see War and Peace and Light and Shadow as a tier under Feast and Famine, and even to Body and Mind to an extent. I'd rank them:
1. Fire and Ice
2. Feast and Famine
3. Body and Mind
4. War and Peace
5. Light and Shadow
To me it depends on what you want to draft. I like War and Peace in hard aggro as it pushes through damage quite fast and gives you time to finish if you are being crushed by higher cc cards. Light and shadow is clearly the worst and Fire and Ice the best, but the other three are about the same level. They shine in different kind of decks.
I find it hard to believe that people can't evaluate most of the conspiracies in their head. Doubling an instant or sorcery, playing a card for any color mana, getting an extra +1/+1 counter, costing less, etc are all easy to imagine applied to the best or worst cards in your cube.
FWIW, I didn't vote on them either. Part of that was not really knowing how to evaluate them in a vacuum with no experience and part of that was a simple dislike of the cards and how they affect the game. To be completely honest, I don't know that I'd pick them that highly if I did see them in a draft. I feel as though I'd probably pass them based solely on these same reasons.
You had mentioned this earlier in a different thread and I thought it was funny. Basically saying "yeah, I understand the rules but I don't care enough to follow them". What is the point of voting at all then if you aren't going to vote according to the guidelines. I don't want to be a stick in the mud or a stickler for what is basically a small project on a hobby forum but it just makes the results mean less when people are voting for different reasons than the intention of the project.
Your comments about not picking conspiracy cards in a draft due to your dislike of how they affect the game is like someone passing power in a power draft because they prefer unpowered cubes. Please don't take it personally but I just don't understand the point in doing this if people are going to skew the votes by voting for a different set of criteria then what was asked for.
Actually, calibretto is following the rules perfectly fine. Even though it is called "Power Ranking", the actual criteria for voting on your top 20 cards is this:
Voters are to rank the Top 20 cards for the [...] group according to what they would take at Pack 1, Pick 1 (P1P1) in a regular draft.
If calibretto wouldn't pick those conspiracies that highly, then he is following the rules we agreed upon just fine when he excludes them from his top 20 list. Personally, I think those rules are flawed regarding the intent of the vote, since voting for what someone would pick first is not the same as voting for the most powerful cards. Sure, there is a strong correlation, but there are also other concerns involved that shift the ranking away from pure power evaluation. A weaker, but universally useful card might get picked higher than a narrow powerful card. And then there is the whole thing about pet cards and not liking individual cards. Those things have no place in a pure power ranking, but they are perfectly within the rules of this specific ranking here.
...
This is how I see the five Swords:
Tier 1: Fire and Ice
Tier 2: Body and Mind, Light and Shadow
Tier 3: Feast and Famine, War and Peace
The last tier are the ones that have the least impact on the board or game state and/or are more situational then the others and/or have worse protection than others. Imo, FaF gets often overvalued and LaS gets often undervalued here. FaI is clearly the best and WaP is clearly the worst though. BaM is near the top because it has the fastest clock (or at least as fast as WaP), but also gives you both a body to equip itself to and a blocker to stay ahead in a race situation.
I'm a little surprised to see most people rank the other Swords higher than Feast and Famine (except for Fire and Ice of course). I always thought Feast and Famine was the clear #2. Though I suppose I can see why Body and Mind gets ranked higher due to feel bads...
Remember this is not just power, but first-picking. I personally feel Feast requires more building around it than the other swords, so if I can choose between it and any other sword in P1P1, I'd probably pick the other.
Doesn't Light and Shadow require some amount of conditions, too, mainly having a creature in the grave? Doesn't seem huge but I've had L&T connect and just gain me 3 life enough times that I'm surprised to see it made the top20 this time around. I guess cubes are more and more creature heavy--as they should be.
I am with you. Light and Shadow can be huge CA and a lock against certain decks, but too often it is just gain 3 life or gain 3 life and an unimportant early game drop. For this reason I find it the weakest sword. Sure the ceiling is high, but the base value can be quite low. It also shines in grindier decks, I prefer the more active effects the other swrds provide in aggressive decks.
This being said, it still is a sword and very powerful. Sword of Fire and Ice is the strongest by far (great effects, great protections), the others are all closer in power. We like to discuss these things, but you cannot go wrong with picking and maindecking any sword as long as your deck has a decent amount of creatures.
It helps that both black and white have a good amount of creature removal, so the protection colors are pretty relevant. And if they kill the creature with a red spell, you can just swing again and get it back which is kinda nice.
Im also surprised at the high L&S ratings. Given the consistancy of the ranking, I think I need to take a harder look at the sword...
It's insane in grindy matchups, (likely second best sword in constrcuted), but I find there's a little too many haymaker based decks in cube for gaining 3 life + raise dead to be the effect I want..
Even the control decks tend to get super bomby finishers out at a reasonable pace. Therefore grinding value is only something I want to be doing in decks with a diversity of answers. Decks that can deal with many of the end game finishers.
BG value based decks are great with L&S, but in ramp decks or agro decks, I want my card advantage to be more in the getting my opponent dead asap direction.
I like Body and mind because it ends the game by itself the fastest, and still creates value if it doesn't end the game.
Well, it's not about which Sword is best, it's about which one you would first pick. I'm generally more hesitant to first pick random equipment because of the whole "must have creatures" thing sticking you with a creature deck that attacks rather than being flexible enough for pure control. Jitte and to a lesser extent Fire and Ice override that drawback by being sooo powerful, so that's why I'm surprised at seeing other swords break top20.
Even in cube, a majority of the decks will feature enough creatures for the sword to be good, and this is more-so with an unpowered cube I feel. And worst come to worst, you don't play your first pick which is fine, but Im pretty OK taking a sword first overall because--at least for me--at least half if not way more of the decks I end up can use swords with ease.
L&S has amazing protections, and secures additional threats that are also sword carriers when it connects. Sword decks are full of creatures, so finding a target isn't hard. But recurring cube-quality creatures with every connection is back-breaking, and can often put a game away after a hit because of that. I think it's the second best Sword in this environment.
I think protection from white and protection from green are pretty close. Protection from white is good at dodging Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile but it still won't stop Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Council's Judgment and Unexpectedly Absent. Protection from green allows weenies to push damage through at a point when green's bigger creatures start walling them out (or when mana dorks start becoming chump blockers). I can't see one protection being significantly better than the other.
There's also lots of decks that don't really care about gaining life, whereas most decks would be interested in untapping their lands. I say this because I've had Light and Shadow whiff on my graveyard many times, and all it does is gain me 3 life -- even in decks with a good number of creatures.
I've also had times where the land untapping has been irrelevant or the discard ability lackluster (or whiff completely). I think it's easier to get great value from L&S, because recurring my dead creatures is something I always want to do, regardless of whether my hand is designed to take advantage of the untapping or my opponent's hand is okay with/immune to the discard. I have F&F ranked #4, myself; I think its 2 abilities are much more situational.
I don't know. I mean, for smaller cubes maybe. The colorless sections in cubes smaller than 405 are really tight. So if they printed a full friendly-colored cycle of them? Yes, that would very likely create a situation where some have to go. But it's surprising how quickly the shelf for great colorless cards drops, so for cubes that are 540 or bigger, I don't think any of the original 5 Swords would get pushed out from a powerlevel standpoint for a very long time.
Just want to chime in and say that I agree with wtwlf's evaluation of SOFAF vs. SOLAS. While SOLAS didn't make my top 20 list, that's mostly due to the inclusion of the few Conspiracy cards I was obliged to vote on. I'd firmly place SOLAS around 18 in my own list and I know several uses voted it higher. The protections on it are the most relevant of the swords, imo, it's just that the triggers don't quite match up to SOBAM and SOFAI. But the land untapping trigger and the discard trigger of SOFAF usually ends up being a bit lackluster, unfortunately. SOWAP and SOFAF will go long before SOLAS does.
I mean, everyone seems to rank that land pretty high but don't even have it on there own cube list. I was wondering why.
It is because the rules don't care about what you have on your own cube. You should vote based on a generic, imaginary draft of a regular (powered) cube with any card you want to include. You only need experience with the card or certainty on how high you'd pick it even if you never actually did it.
I do have Paliano in my cube, but not Library of Alexandria, the land I (and everyone else) voted #1. And there's nothing wrong with that.
A lot of people did the same thing with the conspiracies themselves.
Or with power cards, or un-cards.
===
Frankly, some people apparently consider Conspiracy cards as "more un-cards" than the actual un-cards. I mean, no one bats an eye when Booster Tutor gets voted or when Symbol Status gains a couple of #1s, but as soon as conspiracies show up in lists someone has to ask, all surprised, if they are actually valid to be voted.
And if anyone looks at the actual votes on the Land thread, they'll see how City of Ass is getting better votes than Paliano (and City is obviously rarer among the voter's cubes).
I'm not shock about the fact that High City gets votes at all. I personnaly ran a lot of un-cards over the past few years and I've absolutly no problem about it. What I meant was completly different. I was just referring to the non-inclusion of it in some voter's list opposed to it's ranking in their list. I can understand that Library of Alexandria could seems too oppressive to include for some cube managers, but that's certainly not the case for the High City. Like wtwlf said in the voting thread, it's seems to be link to draft reason and I fully understand the point. And I think there is a huge missunderstand here if you though I was pointing the non-sense about voting for it. I'm not surprise at all and was just wondering why the card wasn't cube by the majority, while being on everyone's list. I got my answer, no need to go further.
Btw, sorry about the spaming on the voting thread. Wasn't award that it was forbid to ask non-juging questions about votes.
I didn't vote for City of Ass at all, while I did vote for Paliano. I do understand the upside of City of Ass when it can be abused with something like Garruk or similar effects to be able to get three mana out of it, but I just don't like this type of card. If I saw it in a draft, I doubt I'd take it very highly and I'd certainly never take it P1P1. With Paliano, I could see it going somewhere in the first eight picks. I doubt I'd ever take it P1P1, but at least at that stage you can try to craft your deck around the named colors.
If you aren't going to include them at all in your top 20 even if you know that they are powerful enough to be on that list then how can you argue that your list is any more accurate than if they were included but in the wrong spots?
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This should not be the result of people voting. The voting rules should make it so that the end result is as accurate as possible and people should feel good with their own vote and should not be annoyed with other peoples vote.
There should not be an elitist, group think feel about the vote. But it should be clear to everybody how they should vote. If we vote for power, everybody should try to rate them, even those with unpowered cubes. With un cards and conspiracies this should also be the case, but these are often harder to rate for people who don't play with them. I just forgot to vote on un cards, because I don't know these cards at all. I would have to read the entire list of these sets.
Making it so that people are voting for the same cards is one way to make this system better. What Lucidvision proposes is another option, but the finer details of that should be written by someone with a solid background in statistics.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Looked a little more into it and trimming the mean is a common statistical aproximation.
http://www.real-statistics.com/descriptive-statistics/outliers-and-robustness/
I can't find a function that gives a greater emphasis to culling out lower values than higher ones, but I think a trimmed mean with ignoring the highest 2 and lowest 2 values is superior to a normal mean.
The excel function would be TRIMMEAN(RANGE,.1)
Where range is like E1:E20 or whatever.
It would ignore the top 10% of values and the bottom 10%.
Although, I recommend using the MEAN function and manually changing the range to ignore the bottom 2-3 and top 1. Think the unreasonable outliers are biased on the downside more than the upside.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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Not necessarily because of better/worse, but just to see the differences in the results.
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I misunderstood the formula earlier too, trimmean(RANGE,.2) trims 10% off top/bottom, not .1.
Here's new rankings of the changed cards, and what cards they swapped positioned with
Blue: Mana Drain #4 <-> Tinker #5
Red: Inferno Titan #9 <-> Young Pyromancer #10 Daretti Scrap Servant #18 <-> Sarkhan #19
Black: Mind Twist #1 <-> Recurring nightmare #2 Thoughtseize #13<-> Imperial Seal #14
White: Hero of Bladehold #9 <-> Wrath of god #10 Brimaz #16<-> Oblivion Ring #17 Monastary mentor #18 <-> Moat #19
Green: Fauna Shaman #10 <-> Eureka #11
If it means anything, I agree with 7/9 of the changes in ranking
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FWIW, I didn't vote on them either. Part of that was not really knowing how to evaluate them in a vacuum with no experience and part of that was a simple dislike of the cards and how they affect the game. To be completely honest, I don't know that I'd pick them that highly if I did see them in a draft. I feel as though I'd probably pass them based solely on these same reasons.
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You had mentioned this earlier in a different thread and I thought it was funny. Basically saying "yeah, I understand the rules but I don't care enough to follow them". What is the point of voting at all then if you aren't going to vote according to the guidelines. I don't want to be a stick in the mud or a stickler for what is basically a small project on a hobby forum but it just makes the results mean less when people are voting for different reasons than the intention of the project.
Your comments about not picking conspiracy cards in a draft due to your dislike of how they affect the game is like someone passing power in a power draft because they prefer unpowered cubes. Please don't take it personally but I just don't understand the point in doing this if people are going to skew the votes by voting for a different set of criteria then what was asked for.
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1. Fire and Ice
2. Feast and Famine
3. Body and Mind
4. War and Peace
5. Light and Shadow
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Actually, calibretto is following the rules perfectly fine. Even though it is called "Power Ranking", the actual criteria for voting on your top 20 cards is this:
If calibretto wouldn't pick those conspiracies that highly, then he is following the rules we agreed upon just fine when he excludes them from his top 20 list. Personally, I think those rules are flawed regarding the intent of the vote, since voting for what someone would pick first is not the same as voting for the most powerful cards. Sure, there is a strong correlation, but there are also other concerns involved that shift the ranking away from pure power evaluation. A weaker, but universally useful card might get picked higher than a narrow powerful card. And then there is the whole thing about pet cards and not liking individual cards. Those things have no place in a pure power ranking, but they are perfectly within the rules of this specific ranking here.
...
This is how I see the five Swords:
Tier 1: Fire and Ice
Tier 2: Body and Mind, Light and Shadow
Tier 3: Feast and Famine, War and Peace
The last tier are the ones that have the least impact on the board or game state and/or are more situational then the others and/or have worse protection than others. Imo, FaF gets often overvalued and LaS gets often undervalued here. FaI is clearly the best and WaP is clearly the worst though. BaM is near the top because it has the fastest clock (or at least as fast as WaP), but also gives you both a body to equip itself to and a blocker to stay ahead in a race situation.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
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Remember this is not just power, but first-picking. I personally feel Feast requires more building around it than the other swords, so if I can choose between it and any other sword in P1P1, I'd probably pick the other.
I am with you. Light and Shadow can be huge CA and a lock against certain decks, but too often it is just gain 3 life or gain 3 life and an unimportant early game drop. For this reason I find it the weakest sword. Sure the ceiling is high, but the base value can be quite low. It also shines in grindier decks, I prefer the more active effects the other swrds provide in aggressive decks.
This being said, it still is a sword and very powerful. Sword of Fire and Ice is the strongest by far (great effects, great protections), the others are all closer in power. We like to discuss these things, but you cannot go wrong with picking and maindecking any sword as long as your deck has a decent amount of creatures.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
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It's insane in grindy matchups, (likely second best sword in constrcuted), but I find there's a little too many haymaker based decks in cube for gaining 3 life + raise dead to be the effect I want..
Even the control decks tend to get super bomby finishers out at a reasonable pace. Therefore grinding value is only something I want to be doing in decks with a diversity of answers. Decks that can deal with many of the end game finishers.
BG value based decks are great with L&S, but in ramp decks or agro decks, I want my card advantage to be more in the getting my opponent dead asap direction.
I like Body and mind because it ends the game by itself the fastest, and still creates value if it doesn't end the game.
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Even in cube, a majority of the decks will feature enough creatures for the sword to be good, and this is more-so with an unpowered cube I feel. And worst come to worst, you don't play your first pick which is fine, but Im pretty OK taking a sword first overall because--at least for me--at least half if not way more of the decks I end up can use swords with ease.
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There's also lots of decks that don't really care about gaining life, whereas most decks would be interested in untapping their lands. I say this because I've had Light and Shadow whiff on my graveyard many times, and all it does is gain me 3 life -- even in decks with a good number of creatures.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
It is because the rules don't care about what you have on your own cube. You should vote based on a generic, imaginary draft of a regular (powered) cube with any card you want to include. You only need experience with the card or certainty on how high you'd pick it even if you never actually did it.
I do have Paliano in my cube, but not Library of Alexandria, the land I (and everyone else) voted #1. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Or with power cards, or un-cards.
===
Frankly, some people apparently consider Conspiracy cards as "more un-cards" than the actual un-cards. I mean, no one bats an eye when Booster Tutor gets voted or when Symbol Status gains a couple of #1s, but as soon as conspiracies show up in lists someone has to ask, all surprised, if they are actually valid to be voted.
And if anyone looks at the actual votes on the Land thread, they'll see how City of Ass is getting better votes than Paliano (and City is obviously rarer among the voter's cubes).
Btw, sorry about the spaming on the voting thread. Wasn't award that it was forbid to ask non-juging questions about votes.
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