Current voting: Top 20 cards, overall. Results will be posted around 01 August 2014. If you want to vote for any section, please do so before 01 August 2014, which is when this project will finish.
This was a project that previously went on from 2010-2012. The project didn't happen in 2013. There have been a number of recent threads that have mentioned a desire to or shifted their focus to ranking commons, so I figured it would be worth bringing this project back.
What is this?
For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this, here's how it works. In this thread, there will be rounds of voting for each section. You can post your top 20 cards (except for lands and multicolor) for the given section we're voting on. Each card in your last posted listing for that section will get a certain number of points (1st gets 20 points, 2nd gets 19 points, etc.). The points will be added up and averaged by the number of voters to get the "final" results, which will be posted in a separate Results Thread, along with interesting statistics / trivia from the data crunching.
The overall goal of this project is to provide some sort of power ranking of cards in pauper cube. There are two main benefits of this project. First (and most importantly), these rankings can give new pauper cubers a very helpful starting point for their own lists. Personally, I know when I started my Pauper cube, prior iterations of this project were invaluable. Second, for more experienced cubers, comparing one's own preferences to aggregated community data can help one to better understand and potentially improve their own cube and how they evaluate cards.
Schedule:
For now, we'll take one week per section, according to the following schedule. Voting starts as soon as this post goes up (so if you're reading it, you can probably vote).
Section, End date
White, 15 June 2014
Blue, 22 June 2014
Black, 29 June 2014
Red, 06 July 2014
Green, 13 July 2014
Multicolor / Artifacts / Lands, 20 July 2014
Overall, 27 July 2014
Note that this schedule isn't really rigorous, it's just here to provide some direction and organization - we want/need as many votes as possible! For instance, if you miss a round of voting, please still post your votes! I will recalculate the results. Alternatively, if you know you'll miss a round of voting, feel free to post rankings early.
Card Eligibility:
All cards that have been physically printed as common in any set up through Conspiracy are eligible. This is to ensure consistency of results, since there isn't a widespread consensus regarding online-only commons in pauper cubes. Also, note that cards which have been shifted to common from other rarities or away from common to other rarities are still eligible; they just have to have been physically printed at common at some point in time.
Note that M15 is released in the middle of the schedule I've given above. Since it would be really messy to retroactively modify earlier voting sections, cards from M15 are not eligible.
Some cards have functional reprints. For instance, see Gideon's Lawkeeper and Goldmeadow Harrier, or Lightning Strike and Searing Spear. Please only vote for one copy out of a set of functional reprints. For clarity, two cards are functional reprints if they differ only in name and/or subtype. I will aggregate functionally-reprinted results as a single result. Similarly, please don't vote for each signet or guildgate individually. If you do post functional reprints separately, I will discount the lower result.
For this project, the color of cards will be determined by EDH rules. A card's color is determined by the colors of mana symbols in the rules text and mana cost of that card. For instance: Forbidden Alchemy is a multicolored card, not a blue card, while Porcelain Legionnaire is a white card. I know that some people use different categorization schemes; for the sake of consistency, this is what we're going to use.
How to Vote:
Here's an example of the voting format (please don't take the card choices seriously; they're sorted by ascending Gatherer ratings):
The card ranked "01" should be your top-rated card (which receives 20 points), and the card ranked "20" should be your 20th-rated card (which receives 1 point).
If you want to rank a (preferably small) set of cards completely equally, make a note of that somehow when you post your votes. I will assign each of those cards a point value equal to the mean value of the points in that interval. For example: if you want to rank three cards as equal for places 11 through 13 (point values 9 through 7), I'll give each card a point value of 8 for your vote. These rankings are most meaningful, however, when the prevalence of equal rankings is minimized.
I don't want to derail the thread but I strongly object to phyrexian mana cards being categorized as colored. Porcelain legionnaire shows up frequently in decks with no way to produce white mana. For all purposes, he is a colorless artifact creature that just happens to have protection from sunlance.
The point of threads like this is to get useful information, right? Let's talk about cards the way they're played, not how they're sorted in Gatherer.
Yeah, I intended "01" to refer to the top card (which receives 20 points in the scoring) and "20" to refer to the 20th card (which receives 1 point in the scoring). I'll make this more clear in the voting section.
EDIT: If we decide to categorize Porcelain Legionnaire as colorless, then everything else gets moved up and Soltari Trooper gets added in at 20th place.
I don't want to derail the thread but I strongly object to phyrexian mana cards being categorized as colored. Porcelain legionnaire shows up frequently in decks with no way to produce white mana. For all purposes, he is a colorless artifact creature that just happens to have protection from sunlance.
The point of threads like this is to get useful information, right? Let's talk about cards the way they're played, not how they're sorted in Gatherer.
Hmm, what do other people think? I'm fine doing something else if people would find that more useful. I chose this scheme for two reasons: (a) that seems to be the most consistent with what previous iterations of this project have used and (b) it seems quite a bit simpler than debating card-specific color categorizations for all Phyrexian mana cards, cards with hybrid mana costs / off-color flashback costs that are primarily used as single color cards (like Pit Fight), and other corner cases, including commonly-categorized mono-colored cards that are primarily played in multicolor decks (like Nightscape Familiar or Wild Nacatl). I'd much rather have an easy to follow categorization rule than a long list of exceptions. Anyway, there hasn't been too much of a discussion on this topic on this forum for a while, maybe it's worth having having a separate thread about how to best categorize some of these cards?
But I think its pretty tough to rate the cards in an order. The power of a card depends too much on gamestate and meta.
Yeah, it's obviously not possible to completely evaluate cards outside of games. But hopefully this will provide a decent approximation. At least, I hope some pretty clear "tiers" of cards will emerge out of the data.
The CC2 removal Enchantments should be considered functional reprints, its kinda useless to list them all in a T20
They're not functional reprints, though, and can presumably be ranked. For instance, in comparison to Pacifism, Journey to Nowhere, Bonds of Faith, and Temporal Isolation all have unique upsides and downsides that can be weighed against each other. From another perspective, I guess this hints at the distinction between a "Top 20 cards" and "Top 20 effects" list. Presumably, if someone thought all the Pacifism variants were easily the best cards in their cube, and if you asked that person to show you the top cards in their cube, they would pull out all of the Pacifism variants. That's what this data is trying to get at.
With regards to the list you posted, would you mind ranking those CMC 2 removal spells?
I will not rank them then. Give Journey 3 Points. Theyre all worth around 3 points for me and the difference on effect almost never matters. Its like Arbor Elf and Llanowar Elves
Another Question. Why do you stretch the rating process over weeks. Its not like my opinion on white cards will influence my opinons on other colors.
I will not rank them then. Give Journey 3 Points. Theyre all worth around 3 points for me and the difference on effect almost never matters. Its like Arbor Elf and Llanowar Elves
Alright, I'll rank Journey as 18, and Bonds of Faith and Pacifism will both be equally ranked between 19 and 20 (Temporal Isolation was excluded via a random seed), so the total points won't change and the cards will be evaluated equally.
In general, for anybody who wants to rank a set of cards as equal for whatever reason, make a note of that when you submit a list. I will assign each of those cards a point value equal to the mean value of the points in that interval. For example: if you want to rank three cards as equal for places 11 through 13 (point values 9 through 7), I'll give each card a point value of 8 for your vote. I'll also make a note of this in the top post.
Another Question. Why do you stretch the rating process over weeks. Its not like my opinion on white cards will influence my opinons on other colors.
I just copied the format from prior iterations. I don't really have any objection to an accelerated, different, or no schedule; the data processing isn't much work on my end of things. Do people want something else? (Perhaps just being able to post rankings on any section up to some predetermined final date?) For what it's worth, I believe the main reason for a lengthier schedule organized by sections is to try to coherently organize votes into blocks while giving as many people as possible (some of whom may not check these forums multiple times per day, like I usually do) a reasonable voting window.
EDIT: Also, it's not like I'm going to somehow prevent people from voting on other cube sections. If you want to do rankings for every section right now, feel free! Maybe just put votes for different sections in spoiler tags or something so it's a bit easier to follow. If we don't sacrifice accuracy, it's always better to do things more efficiently.
EDIT 2: Also, if you want to do rankings for every section, I don't think it's worth doing a full 20 card list for things like the land section (since most of the lands are cycles that get grouped together). We should decide on what sizes are best for multicolored, colorless, and land sections.
Happy to see this project get off the ground. I don't Cube much Pauper recently so I need a bit to collect my thoughts. Please don't close the voting without me!! I will rank Custodi Squire high but I don't actually know how good it is to be honest -- best guess basically.
I don't want to derail the thread but I strongly object to phyrexian mana cards being categorized as colored. Porcelain legionnaire shows up frequently in decks with no way to produce white mana. For all purposes, he is a colorless artifact creature that just happens to have protection from sunlance.
The point of threads like this is to get useful information, right? Let's talk about cards the way they're played, not how they're sorted in Gatherer.
Hmm, what do other people think? I'm fine doing something else if people would find that more useful. I chose this scheme for two reasons: (a) that seems to be the most consistent with what previous iterations of this project have used and (b) it seems quite a bit simpler than debating card-specific color categorizations for all Phyrexian mana cards, cards with hybrid mana costs / off-color flashback costs that are primarily used as single color cards (like Pit Fight), and other corner cases, including commonly-categorized mono-colored cards that are primarily played in multicolor decks (like Nightscape Familiar or Wild Nacatl). I'd much rather have an easy to follow categorization rule than a long list of exceptions. Anyway, there hasn't been too much of a discussion on this topic on this forum for a while, maybe it's worth having having a separate thread about how to best categorize some of these cards?
I honestly don't see anything wrong with doing it on an individual basis.
I look at how cards are actually played and how they are drafted. For example, no one is going to play jilt in a deck with no red mana sources, let's just be real here. Technically, yes, you could run it without red and it's not a dead card or anything, but it would just be bad. So it's a UR card. Strangling soot, on the other hand, is perfectly playable even without red mana. Sure, it's better if you can produce red, but again, just think practically. Anyone playing black is going to pick this card, whether they have red too or not. So it's a mono black card.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
Results for white are up in the results thread. For anyone who may have missed the designated voting period, you can still submit votes for white cards until the entire project is done in this thread, and I'll try my best to update results as needed.
With that out of the way, let's start voting for the top 20 blue cards!
Also, all of the white votes were in very quickly. I'm fine expediting the schedule I gave in the original post and posting results after a shorter period than a week, if people want. Also, anyone can always post votes for any cube sections up until all results are finalized. The schedule is just there for some amount of organization.
EDH rules make sense to me for consistencies sake even if I don't use them for my own cube.
So kird ape is mono red and deathbellow raider is rakdos.
Btw soot is 2C instant removal that kills most creatures, which is good enough for any deck. And running that 1 mountain is not worth possibly having to mulligan
Id even rate Think Twice over Divination. And ofc there are situations where D is better, but overall Deep Analysis is the better card. And Compulsive Research > Sift
This was a project that previously went on from 2010-2012. The project didn't happen in 2013. There have been a number of recent threads that have mentioned a desire to or shifted their focus to ranking commons, so I figured it would be worth bringing this project back.
What is this?
For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this, here's how it works. In this thread, there will be rounds of voting for each section. You can post your top 20 cards (except for lands and multicolor) for the given section we're voting on. Each card in your last posted listing for that section will get a certain number of points (1st gets 20 points, 2nd gets 19 points, etc.). The points will be added up and averaged by the number of voters to get the "final" results, which will be posted in a separate Results Thread, along with interesting statistics / trivia from the data crunching.
The overall goal of this project is to provide some sort of power ranking of cards in pauper cube. There are two main benefits of this project. First (and most importantly), these rankings can give new pauper cubers a very helpful starting point for their own lists. Personally, I know when I started my Pauper cube, prior iterations of this project were invaluable. Second, for more experienced cubers, comparing one's own preferences to aggregated community data can help one to better understand and potentially improve their own cube and how they evaluate cards.
Schedule:
For now, we'll take one week per section, according to the following schedule. Voting starts as soon as this post goes up (so if you're reading it, you can probably vote).
Section, End date
White, 15 June 2014
Blue, 22 June 2014
Black, 29 June 2014
Red, 06 July 2014
Green, 13 July 2014
Multicolor / Artifacts / Lands, 20 July 2014
Overall, 27 July 2014
Note that this schedule isn't really rigorous, it's just here to provide some direction and organization - we want/need as many votes as possible! For instance, if you miss a round of voting, please still post your votes! I will recalculate the results. Alternatively, if you know you'll miss a round of voting, feel free to post rankings early.
Card Eligibility:
How to Vote:
Here's an example of the voting format (please don't take the card choices seriously; they're sorted by ascending Gatherer ratings):
02 Defensive Stance
03 Coma Veil
04 Cephalid Snitch
05 Slipstream Serpent
06 Wilderness Hypnotist
07 Saprazzan Raider
08 Hisoka's Defiance
09 Ronom Serpent
10 Disorient
11 Sea Eagle
12 Cephalid Aristocrat
13 Dematerialize
14 Crystal Seer
15 Glintwing Invoker
16 Spell Snip
17 Eternity Snare
18 Fugitive Wizard
19 Callous Deceiver
20 Coastal Hornclaw
The card ranked "01" should be your top-rated card (which receives 20 points), and the card ranked "20" should be your 20th-rated card (which receives 1 point).
If you want to rank a (preferably small) set of cards completely equally, make a note of that somehow when you post your votes. I will assign each of those cards a point value equal to the mean value of the points in that interval. For example: if you want to rank three cards as equal for places 11 through 13 (point values 9 through 7), I'll give each card a point value of 8 for your vote. These rankings are most meaningful, however, when the prevalence of equal rankings is minimized.
Prior Power Rankings projects
2010 Rankings
2011 Rankings
2012 Rankings
The point of threads like this is to get useful information, right? Let's talk about cards the way they're played, not how they're sorted in Gatherer.
Anyway
19 shelter
18 observant alseid
17 supply-line cranes
16 soltari trooper
15 hobble
14 kor sanctifiers
13 coalition honor guard
12 sunlance
11 master of diversion
10 steppe lynx
09 totem-guide hartebeest
08 bonds of faith
07 journey to nowhere
06 oblivion ring
05 seraph of dawn
04 recumbent bliss
03 faith's fetters
02 custodi squire
01 guardian of the guildpact
EDITED & FIXED NOW?
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
I'll think about this and get a ranking together later.
Level 1 Judge
Here's my vote for white's top 20:
02 Seraph of Dawn
03 Custodi Squire
04 Coalition Honor Guard
05 Faith's Fetters
06 Oblivion Ring
07 Journey to Nowhere
08 Recumbent Bliss
09 Temporal Isolation
10 Pacifism
11 Bonds of Faith
12 Porcelain Legionnaire
13 Kor Skyfisher
14 Syndic of Tithes
15 Blinding Beam
16 Heavy Ballista
17 Troubled Healer
18 Goldmeadow Harrier
19 Aven Riftwatcher
20 Master of Diversion
EDIT: If we decide to categorize Porcelain Legionnaire as colorless, then everything else gets moved up and Soltari Trooper gets added in at 20th place.
Hmm, what do other people think? I'm fine doing something else if people would find that more useful. I chose this scheme for two reasons: (a) that seems to be the most consistent with what previous iterations of this project have used and (b) it seems quite a bit simpler than debating card-specific color categorizations for all Phyrexian mana cards, cards with hybrid mana costs / off-color flashback costs that are primarily used as single color cards (like Pit Fight), and other corner cases, including commonly-categorized mono-colored cards that are primarily played in multicolor decks (like Nightscape Familiar or Wild Nacatl). I'd much rather have an easy to follow categorization rule than a long list of exceptions. Anyway, there hasn't been too much of a discussion on this topic on this forum for a while, maybe it's worth having having a separate thread about how to best categorize some of these cards?
But I think its pretty tough to rate the cards in an order. The power of a card depends too much on gamestate and meta.
But, well:
My ranking
(20points)
(1 Point)
Edit: The CC2 removal Enchantments should be considered functional reprints, its kinda useless to list them all in a T20
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Yeah, it's obviously not possible to completely evaluate cards outside of games. But hopefully this will provide a decent approximation. At least, I hope some pretty clear "tiers" of cards will emerge out of the data.
They're not functional reprints, though, and can presumably be ranked. For instance, in comparison to Pacifism, Journey to Nowhere, Bonds of Faith, and Temporal Isolation all have unique upsides and downsides that can be weighed against each other. From another perspective, I guess this hints at the distinction between a "Top 20 cards" and "Top 20 effects" list. Presumably, if someone thought all the Pacifism variants were easily the best cards in their cube, and if you asked that person to show you the top cards in their cube, they would pull out all of the Pacifism variants. That's what this data is trying to get at.
With regards to the list you posted, would you mind ranking those CMC 2 removal spells?
Another Question. Why do you stretch the rating process over weeks. Its not like my opinion on white cards will influence my opinons on other colors.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Alright, I'll rank Journey as 18, and Bonds of Faith and Pacifism will both be equally ranked between 19 and 20 (Temporal Isolation was excluded via a random seed), so the total points won't change and the cards will be evaluated equally.
In general, for anybody who wants to rank a set of cards as equal for whatever reason, make a note of that when you submit a list. I will assign each of those cards a point value equal to the mean value of the points in that interval. For example: if you want to rank three cards as equal for places 11 through 13 (point values 9 through 7), I'll give each card a point value of 8 for your vote. I'll also make a note of this in the top post.
I just copied the format from prior iterations. I don't really have any objection to an accelerated, different, or no schedule; the data processing isn't much work on my end of things. Do people want something else? (Perhaps just being able to post rankings on any section up to some predetermined final date?) For what it's worth, I believe the main reason for a lengthier schedule organized by sections is to try to coherently organize votes into blocks while giving as many people as possible (some of whom may not check these forums multiple times per day, like I usually do) a reasonable voting window.
EDIT: Also, it's not like I'm going to somehow prevent people from voting on other cube sections. If you want to do rankings for every section right now, feel free! Maybe just put votes for different sections in spoiler tags or something so it's a bit easier to follow. If we don't sacrifice accuracy, it's always better to do things more efficiently.
EDIT 2: Also, if you want to do rankings for every section, I don't think it's worth doing a full 20 card list for things like the land section (since most of the lands are cycles that get grouped together). We should decide on what sizes are best for multicolored, colorless, and land sections.
I honestly don't see anything wrong with doing it on an individual basis.
I look at how cards are actually played and how they are drafted. For example, no one is going to play jilt in a deck with no red mana sources, let's just be real here. Technically, yes, you could run it without red and it's not a dead card or anything, but it would just be bad. So it's a UR card. Strangling soot, on the other hand, is perfectly playable even without red mana. Sure, it's better if you can produce red, but again, just think practically. Anyone playing black is going to pick this card, whether they have red too or not. So it's a mono black card.
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
Strangling Soot is a Rakdos Card. I recommend running a single mountain, even if youre in other colors.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
02 Custodi Squire
03 Coalition Honor Guard
04 Seraph of Dawn
05 Oblivion Ring
06 Journey to Nowhere
07 Faith's Fetters
08 Temporal Isolation
09 Recumbent Bliss
10 Troubled Healer
11 Totem-Guide Hartebeest
12 Porcelain Legionnaire
13 Master of Diversion
14 Kor Skyfisher
15 Cenn's Enlistment
16 Kor Hookmaster
17 Celestial Flare
18 Kor Line-Slinger
19 Pacifism
20 Test of Faith
I like the idea of using EDH rules, just to make everything consistent. Plus, Sunlance can't kill Porcelain Legionnaire.
2 Coalition Honor Guard
3 Custodi Squire
4 Seraph of Dawn
5 Faith's Fetters
6 Syndic of Tithes
7 Cenn's Enlistment
8 Gideon's Lawkeeper/Goldmeadow Harrier
9 Recumbent Bliss
10 Oblivion Ring
11 Temporal Isolation
12 Journey to Nowhere
13 Totem-Guide Hartebeest
14 Stormfront Pegasus
15 Porcelain Legionnaire
16 Blinding Beam
17 Master of Diversion
18 Prismatic Strands
19 Basilica Guards
20 Observant Alseid
Level 1 Judge
Level 1 Judge
You have Aven Riftwatcher at both 8 and 19; I'm assuming one of those is a mistake?
With that out of the way, let's start voting for the top 20 blue cards!
Also, all of the white votes were in very quickly. I'm fine expediting the schedule I gave in the original post and posting results after a shorter period than a week, if people want. Also, anyone can always post votes for any cube sections up until all results are finalized. The schedule is just there for some amount of organization.
Constructed (Casual) | Pinksleeves |
Constructed (Pauper) | Izzet Fiend | Mono Black | Burn |
Constructed (Standard) | Under Construction |
Constructed (Modern) | Fate Seal |
Constructed (Legacy) | Dream Halls |
Constructed (Vintage) | Not Yet |
Constructed (Commander) | Sliver Overlord | Uril, the Miststalker | Braids, Cabal Minion |
Limited | Alara Block | Time Spiral Block | Innistrad Block | Rise of the Eldrazi |
02 Stitched Drake
03 Looter il-Kor
04 Mist Raven
05 Capsize
06 Deep Analysis
07 Flood
08 Ponder
09 Daze
10 Miscalculation
11 Exclude
12 Repulse
13 Ninja of the Deep Hours
14 Wormfang Drake
15 Sigiled Starfish
16 Spiketail Drakeling
17 Thalakos Scout
18 Aven Fleetwing
19 Undo
20 Ghostly Flicker
So kird ape is mono red and deathbellow raider is rakdos.
Btw soot is 2C instant removal that kills most creatures, which is good enough for any deck. And running that 1 mountain is not worth possibly having to mulligan
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
The difference is way bigger, than the CC2 removal Auras in white.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
02 foresee
03 man-o'-war
04 shimmering glasskite
05 mist raven
06 benthic giant
07 preordain
08 sift
09 looter il-kor
10 narcolepsy
11 calcite snapper
12 exclude
13 repulse
14 elgaud shieldmate
15 sea gate oracle
16 carnivorous death-parrot
17 divination
18 condescend
19 miscalculation
20 gryff vanguard
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
You sure, you didnt miss Compulsive Research and
Deep Analysis ?!?
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t