MTG Salvation

I was wondering what cmc do you guys typically gravitate in your decks. It would also be helpful if your decks lean more towards a competitive/need to win vs. more casual.

I find that my decks tend to fall in the 4-5 cmc range, being more aggrocentric with big bomb finishers.

1. Derevi 2.86 Aggro/Control/Combo
2. Azusa 3.76 Aggro
3. Rafiq 3.02 Aggro/Control
4. Wort 2.21 Aggro/Combo

Listed in order of highest to lowest win-rate. All reasonably competitive.

I was actually interested to see where I fell on this so I ran all of my decks through deckstats. My lowest average cmc (Thrun) is at 2.97 and my highest one (Marton) fell into 3.89. Overall I fairly regularly hit the 3.5 range plus or minus a bit. I have a fairly regular standard of what I find acceptable for the top of my curve though so this doesn't really surprise me. It was interesting just as to how similar my average cmc was across my decks though.

I can only list the ones I have together at the moment, but they do range from casual to competitive.

Marath: 3.63
Damia: 3.34 (Last I checked, it has most likely gone down after the latest round of test cards)
Varolz: 3.27
Lovisa: 4.05
Hythonia: 3.98
Kamahl: 4.11
Patron: 3.98
Borborygmos: 3.71
Oona: 3.14
Kresh: 4.12

Everything but Lovisa performs reasonably well against decks that are decently tuned, although we don't have any thing like Hermit Druid or Ad Nasium in our group.

I voted 4. Its hard to actually say in some cases. For example, In my Wort, the Raidmother deck the avg. CMC is 3.48, but with 6 X-spells that is misleading. Furthermore, cards like Sprout swarm and Rude Awakening have effectively much higher casting costs. In other decks, where would you put the CMC of an Everflowing Chalice for example?

EDIT:
So with just the 9 decks that I have recently updated lists for, and just taking every card for its strict CMC (except for Mana Crypt which I just exclude altogether) my decks shake out like so.

Captain Sisay - 4.09
Bosh - 4.00
Trostani - 3.93
Rhys - 3.87
Ghave - 3.83
Obzedat - 3.80
Edrek Sahr - 3.70
Wort - 3.48
Gisela - 3.45

This makes sense to me. My green decks have a higher curve because I have lots of ramp in them, Bosh is way up there but it runs a ton of mana rocks, and my non-green decks are much lower due to a scarcity of mana.

Around 3.5-4 for most of my decks. I have a couple that trend up high, like Xira and Braids (4.40!), for reasons of running a multiple of very large spells.

I have:
Nekusar, the Mindrazer 2.75
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher 3.49
Erebos, God of the Dead 3.88
Nemata, Grove Guardian 4.14
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa 4.23

Prossh is pretty competative and comes in at my second lowest curve. Nekusar is Nekusar. Lots of rocks and cheap spells. Actually thinking of pulling this one apart. It just doesn't fit my play style well.

Erebos is decent and does ok. It isn't as tuned as Prossh is but is fun to play.

Kamahl should be pretty competitive. I haven't had much time to test drive it yet. Nemata, Lord of Saprolings is a deck I threw together for less competitive play. These have my highest curves but are stuffed full of ramp. Cuz it's green.

Saffi Eriksdotter 3.19
Yeva, Nature's Herald 3.71
Sakashima the Imposter 3.66
Kumano, Master Yamabushi 3.19
Dune-Brood Nephilim 3.58
Tajic, Blade of the Legion 2.83
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord 3.42
Rasputin Dreamweaver 4.11
Krenko, Mob Boss 2.92

Highest is Rasputin, but that is due to big shiny things like Eldrazi, which that deck can power out very quickly.
Otherwise, I'm not a fan of my decks being above 4.

It's hard to picture a deck actually working with a curve over 6, or even 5 for that matter.

usually between 2.5 and 3 unless there's some reason for it to be crazy high or low.

Doomsday curves at less than 2 my casual decks curve around 3.5 most my decks curve at around 2.5-3

Jaya: 3.32
Jasmine: 2.94
Sisters: 3.22
Dralnu: 2.97
Patron: 3.54

Using the lists on the site here, which are probably a bit out of date in most cases. Those numbers also include generals, which ups it slightly in most cases. I usually end up right around 3. The two highest are an elf deck, with all the mana production that entails, and a combo deck with a primarily infinite mana win.

My lowest ones are pretty similar, Karador and Odric are just above 3. Progenitus is my highest at just under 6 (it has lots of ramp). Overall, my average is around three or four

Quote from Stupid Intelligence

My lowest ones are pretty similar, Karador and Odric are just above 3. Progenitus is my highest at just under 6 (it has lots of ramp). Overall, my average is around three or four

What are you possibly running that brings your curve up that high? I'd think that including enough ramp to play the big stuff would drag the number down below that.

Do you have a posted list?

Omnath: 4.37 (Big Mana)
Darien: 3.36 (Tokens)
Derevi: 3.20 (Tempo)
Vish Kal: 5.31 (Rock)
Prossh: 3.63 (Combo/Tokens)
Sigarda: 3.49 (Voltron/Enchantress)

Quote from Weebo

Quote from Stupid Intelligence

My lowest ones are pretty similar, Karador and Odric are just above 3. Progenitus is my highest at just under 6 (it has lots of ramp). Overall, my average is around three or four

What are you possibly running that brings your curve up that high? I'd think that including enough ramp to play the big stuff would drag the number down below that.

Do you have a posted list?

I'm going to guess its because of a couple of things. The Bringers have a CMC of 9, but nobody ever pays more than 5 to play them. The Dragon's Maze split cards have a total CMC of either 8 or 9 even though no single side costs more than 6. People like to play Conflux at 8 mana or Reaper King at 10 mana (where you only pay 5 most of the time). There are lots of cards that inflate an average CMC.

I voted four as an average. I had a wort boggart auntie list on mtgo that was high twos but it maxed at five and was super heavy in the three drops. The rest have been higher. I'm currently rocking Godo in paper and it is pretty low despite the mana doublers considering the goblin (-.-) package and cheap equipment.

I don't. It runs a bunch of stuff that is really high cost. I run 3 of the Ultimatums, obviously Progenitus, and a lot of 6 drop wraths plus some big 7 and 8 drop beaters. Everything in there is really pretty foiled out, and it is all multicolored except a few wraths and the ramp cards. It's not made to win, it's made to look pretty.

Quote from Forgotten One

Quote from Weebo

Quote from Stupid Intelligence

My lowest ones are pretty similar, Karador and Odric are just above 3. Progenitus is my highest at just under 6 (it has lots of ramp). Overall, my average is around three or four

What are you possibly running that brings your curve up that high? I'd think that including enough ramp to play the big stuff would drag the number down below that.

Do you have a posted list?

I'm going to guess its because of a couple of things. The Bringers have a CMC of 9, but nobody ever pays more than 5 to play them. The Dragon's Maze split cards have a total CMC of either 8 or 9 even though no single side costs more than 6. People like to play Conflux at 8 mana or Reaper King at 10 mana (where you only pay 5 most of the time). There are lots of cards that inflate an average CMC.

I don't have a list up. But it's built to be pretty and not competitive. Also, Forgotten One explained a lot of it. I do run three of the Ultimatums and a significant number of the split cards.

Quote from ISBPathfinder

I was actually interested to see where I fell on this so I ran all of my decks through deckstats. My lowest average cmc (Thrun) is at 2.97 and my highest one (Marton) fell into 3.89. Overall I fairly regularly hit the 3.5 range plus or minus a bit. I have a fairly regular standard of what I find acceptable for the top of my curve though so this doesn't really surprise me. It was interesting just as to how similar my average cmc was across my decks though.

Deck stats doesn't calculate it correctly, it doesn't include the 0 cmc from your lands so it doesn't include them in the division.

Lazav is just under 2 cmc last I checked.

Quote from Stupid Intelligence

I don't. It runs a bunch of stuff that is really high cost. I run 3 of the Ultimatums, obviously Progenitus, and a lot of 6 drop wraths plus some big 7 and 8 drop beaters. Everything in there is really pretty foiled out, and it is all multicolored except a few wraths and the ramp cards. It's not made to win, it's made to look pretty.

That's still really, really high. I'm not questioning your ability to win games or your motivation for making the deck, I'm honestly just trying to figure out how you got that high a curve.

For example, I just threw a bunch of numbers into excel. A deck with three 9 cmc, five 8 cmc, six 7 cmc, eleven 6 cmc, nine 5 cmc, five 4 cmc, eleven 3 cmc, eight 2 cmc, and five 1 cmc cards only has an average cost of 4.75. That's 25 cards at 6+, and it's still way below 6. As a more realistic example, Raikou Rider's Mayael primer has an average cmc of 5.02, and she's a general notorious for cheating out fat creatures. I'm really curious about what specifically goes into a deck to get the cost up that high.

Quote from NGW

Quote from ISBPathfinder

I was actually interested to see where I fell on this so I ran all of my decks through deckstats. My lowest average cmc (Thrun) is at 2.97 and my highest one (Marton) fell into 3.89. Overall I fairly regularly hit the 3.5 range plus or minus a bit. I have a fairly regular standard of what I find acceptable for the top of my curve though so this doesn't really surprise me. It was interesting just as to how similar my average cmc was across my decks though.

Deck stats doesn't calculate it correctly, it doesn't include the 0 cmc from your lands so it doesn't include them in the division.

Lazav is just under 2 cmc last I checked.

Hmm I've been using deck stats forever and I didn't know this I knew things like FoW would be inaccurate but that's lame
Iguess simple conversion is 1 - .numberoflanfs X decstatscurve

Mine generally curve in somewhere between 3 and 4, leaning more toward the 3 side. I'm not particularly competitive, but I do want my decks to be effective, and to be able to do something significant even during the earlier turns of the game.

Average CMC = with or without lands?

I'm assuming without lands. Include lands and my CMC goes way down, since over 1/3 of my deck = CMC 0