MTG Salvation

Question #1: Should we vote on Wildfire and Burning of Xinye as one card or two?



In the White Results thread there was some concern expressed as to the validity of the high difference between the rankings of Wrath of God (#4) and Day of Judgment, two cards that are in function extremely similar but not quite identical. It's too late to change how we categorize Wrath and Day now, but Red voting will open in a few days and we face a similar issue with Wildfire and Burning of Xinye.

The difference between these cards is real but small but real, as indestructible lands will not be taken out by Burning of Xinye, but they will be Wildfire. To the best of my knowledge, the only corner cases where this difference comes up in a typical cube environment are that Boros Charm can be cast in response to BoX, and Elspeth, Knight-Errant's ultimate emblem can also make all of a single player's permanents indestructible. Not to say that these situations won't be impactful when they occur, but I don't think they occur frequently seriously impact any cube manager or player's evaluation of either. If you want one in your cube, you want both. If you see them both in the same pack in a draft, you're probably taking one and hoping to wheel the other.

However, I understand this has been contentious in the past, so I'm opening this up for discussion and a vote.

Question #2: Should Incinerate and Searing Spear/Lightning Strike be considered as 1 card or 2?



This is probably more of a hypothetical question since Incinerate hasn't made the Power Rankings since 2010, but since the Wrath/Day debate centered around the declining importance of regeneration I thought this might also be a good time to consider how we think about whether Incinerate should be voted on separately from Searing Spear/Lightning Strike. As discussed in the White Results thread, the only regenerators left in most cubes are Thrun, the Last Troll which can't even be targeted, Lotleth Troll and Masticore, and the latter two are on their way out of many cubes. River Boa/Marsh Boa and Wolfir Avenger also see some fringe play, so they may also be worth keeping in mind, but ultimately if we don't care about the regeneration clause on Wrath, we shouldn't care about it on Incinerate either.

This poll will close in 48 hours, at 10:30 p.m., Wednesday October 19th Seoul time (9:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time).

Both pairs are very similar, but they're not functionally equivalent in a cube environment. Isn't that our standard for combining cards?

Historically, yes, but the White results for Wrath of God and Day of Judgment showed that following that standard strictly may not be producing accurate results. I've highlighted the spreadsheet to show how this appears to have happened. Out of 34 voters, 30 people voted for them as exactly one slot apart, while 3 people (presumably) forgot to vote for Day of Judgment. The overwhelming majority sees them as extremely close, but a few outliers has left them ranked 4 slots apart. Wrath and Day were both explicitly mentioned in the opening post, but I think it's fair to say that Day was still drastically undervoted, and I'm not the only person who expressed concern about this and that we should consider consolidating Wildfire and BoX as a result.

It's a significant change from standing precedent, though, so it definitely deserves discussion and a vote.

@Spike Rogue: there's also Experiment One as a regenerator in cube. I think that's relevant enough to keep the rule as it is.

Quote from psly4mne »

Both pairs are very similar, but they're not functionally equivalent in a cube environment. Isn't that our standard for combining cards?

Yes, currently. But there was talk about changing it because Wrath of God and Day of Judgment got too distant in the white ranking (mainly because a few voters just didn't include DoJ). So some people think it would be better if they were voted in a single entry instead.

I don't like changing rules in the middle of voting. We aren't redoing the White vote at this point, so I prefer if the rest followed the same rules.

I also prefer the rule as it yes, regardless of the above point. It is just the least subjective way to handle that (besides just having all cards be considered unique). How many cards do we need in the average cube to differentiate cards? To me that number is 1.

I have historically voted for them to be separate because they're different. But after seeing the consequences of that in action (inexplicably setting the cards multiple places apart from each other in the results) we may as well group them together.

Question 1: Together

Question 2 : Seperate (This might actually happen once a year, unlike case one which only happens once in a blue moon)

Quote from Hicham »

Question 1: Together

Question 2 : Seperate (This might actually happen once a year, unlike case one which only happens once in a blue moon)

If those are your votes, please indicate that in the poll at the top of the thread.

I don't like changing rules in the middle of voting. We aren't redoing the White vote at this point, so I prefer if the rest followed the same rules.

I agree that this is not ideal, I also wish we'd thought to discuss this before White voting began. However, looking over the Power Rankings from the past few years the gap between Wrath and Day is not a new phenomenon, Day's been ranked at least 3 slots lower than Wrath since it was first printed. Since the subject came up and Red voting hasn't started yet, I figured it would be better to discuss and resolve the issue now than to risk letting it slip our minds again for another year.

I think we can also safely let the results of this poll on Incinerate and Searing Spear/Lightning Strike answer the question of how we rank Wrath of God and Day of Judgment for next year.

The community has spoken!

The community has voted 24-4 to consider Wildfire and Burning of Xinye as 1 card in this year's Power Rankings.

The community has also voted 19-7 to consider Incinerate and Lightning Strike/Searing Spear as 1 card in this year's Power Rankings.

This poll is now CLOSED.