I will add it to the short list!
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- Thread starter James Stevenson
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If you're looking at a card for the second time in a draft, or reading a piece of flavor text for a new mechanic for the second time, how much of a "discount" do you get, in your estimation? In other words, what percentage of reading time do you save when you're understanding a new card that you've seen once previously? How about the third time or the fourth time?
It depends on how straightforward the card/mechanic is, to the point where the only generalization I'd make is that my recall drops if a card does more than two things (or has a bunch of exceptions/timing restrictions).
To give a dumb example... let's look at good ol' Cryptic Command:
My mental summary for the card (without looking at it) is "I can bounce+draw with it or counter+draw with it"... and then I have to think a bit to go "oh yeah, I can also counter+bounce, and there's another mode? It taps... creatures? I think?"
To give a dumb example... let's look at good ol' Cryptic Command:
My mental summary for the card (without looking at it) is "I can bounce+draw with it or counter+draw with it"... and then I have to think a bit to go "oh yeah, I can also counter+bounce, and there's another mode? It taps... creatures? I think?"
Familiarity with cards matter a lot, especially for players who may not be as engaged with Magic as a whole as they once were. New mechanics are always tough to process if they haven't been done before, there are whole ass mechanics now that require additional tracking (Dungeons are especially awful), and every additional line of text is just more to parse through. If a card is a combination of familiar effects I'd be more willing to make exceptions even if it feels wordy. For example:
Flametongue Kavu is a classic so you understand how this works on ETB, multikicker has been ever present as a mechanic that returns every few years, so even with a few lines of text it's easy enough to understand how this works.
People are very familiar with Tarmogoyf as a card so it's not difficult to understand how to size this and then there's similar familiarity with Kavu effects. This isn't just tied to a single body, but players are used to multiple triggers off creatures ETBing an checking types (especially with how much has been printed for EDH in the last 3-4 years).
There is world of difference when compared to ugly shit like this:
There are a certain number of complexity points you have to work with when it comes to crafting a gameplay experience and you get to choose how to utilize those. If there are too many then that will kill interest in playing your environment again for certain players. To that end I highly value cleaner designs and aesthetics with cards nowadays than I might have before. If cards are too cumbersome to read through or require additional tracking with unique counters I'm completely out on it most of the time. I'll gladly try them in EDH where the onus is on me as the deckbuilder to know how cards work, but it's not fair to subject your players to that same standard if it's cumbersome.
It will depend on some semi-qualitative aspects of the card's rules, definitely.
As I think about this, I'm settling on the theory that you spend 100% of the time it takes to read a card the very first time, and then the percentage decays from there. I think a second read is going to take something in the range of 33-67% as long as it took the first time, and then the fraction decays down from there to some minimum value that it takes to glance at a known card and recognize it, which is perhaps 5% of what it takes to read a completely unfamiliar card.
For reminder text that's coming up multiple times within a draft, I estimate that the reader will eventually start to completely skip the reminder text after looking at it the first n times, which will vary from person to person. I think reading it 2-3 times is probably enough most of the time.
Well said - no arguments here.
I'm trying to estimate the average words that a player reads per card in a retail draft so I can compare it to my cube. Therefore, I am making an assumption that most of the cards and mechanics are thankfully not in the same category with the worst offenders from commander sets.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Gotta congratulate @landofMordor for becoming @gaytransmulldrifter 's Wario on the most recent episode of luckypaperradio, where he was dubbed Parker "Straight Cis Baneslayer" Lamascus
They gotta put me on the show now so I can defeat Parker in some sort of kart race or tennis match.
Since I've started gathering data, I mostly realized how little data with a small sample size really matters. For example, in my cube Consider and Rampant Growth are both in the top three cards of their color according to win rates. whereas Opt and Sakura-Tribe Elder are in the bottom three.
Before I thought a sample size of 18+ games played, should be enough to gain a rough idea of how good a card is, bit since I saw how off the results were, I corrected this number. Now I only put the effort in to calculate a win rate when I have data on 45+ games for a card. Probably still rather low.
This leads me to two questions I have for y'all to think about:
• At which number of games would you be content that the win rate of card is somewhat accurate?
• At which number of games would you be content that the win rate of a deck atchetype is somewhat accurate?
Pretty sure the second number can be lower. Especially since I have mostly "games-in-deck-winrates" for cards. It is almost impossible to host a paper draft and always check, after every game at any table, whether a card was drawn this game.
Before I thought a sample size of 18+ games played, should be enough to gain a rough idea of how good a card is, bit since I saw how off the results were, I corrected this number. Now I only put the effort in to calculate a win rate when I have data on 45+ games for a card. Probably still rather low.
This leads me to two questions I have for y'all to think about:
• At which number of games would you be content that the win rate of card is somewhat accurate?
• At which number of games would you be content that the win rate of a deck atchetype is somewhat accurate?
Pretty sure the second number can be lower. Especially since I have mostly "games-in-deck-winrates" for cards. It is almost impossible to host a paper draft and always check, after every game at any table, whether a card was drawn this game.
For the one or two sickos out there who love the Future Sight frame, or white borders, keep an eye out for the Mystery Booster 2 reveal later today.
(I say "sickos" as the proud owner of the url https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/whitebordered mind you)
We don't know exactly but we do know it'll be at least one of each:
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new cards looking just great thanks
(I say "sickos" as the proud owner of the url https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/whitebordered mind you)
We don't know exactly but we do know it'll be at least one of each:
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new cards looking just great thanks
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MTGO cube being played at MTGO cube playrates and nothing smaller. i straight up would never do math on my own cube's data there just isn't enough of it. case studies are great though which is part of why I want to get that podcast I've been working on published (more on this elsewhere soon) (nameofshow "Cards We Cut")
these are for me! SUPER stoked
Wrenn and One is... certainly a card. I appreciate the commitment to the bit.
(That futuresight Gush is pretty, though.)
EDIT: Of the cards I've seen so far, some of them are clearly jokes (Indicate is a
cost sorcery whose full rule text is "Target creature"...), but there are also some neat designs (a "Bedtime Story" Saga that enters without a lore counter on it and gets lore counters on your end step), as well as some cards that I just straight-up like:
Starting Town NPC -
Human Peasant
Each creature card in your hand has a Adventure sorcery named Fetch Herbs with "You gain 2 life."
Each creature card you cast from exile enters with a +1/+1 counter on it.
2/3
All of your creature spells also being sorcery spells is... damn, I love it.
-
Pyromancy 101 -
Sorcery - Lesson
Pyromancy 101 deals 1 damage to any target.
Teach (Then exile this spell taught to a creature you control. For as long as this card remains exiled, that creature has ": Copy the exiled card. You may cast that copy for its teach cost".)
Prowess is drooling.
-
You Compleat Me -
Sorcery
If your life total is greater than 10, it becomes 10. For the rest of the game, your maximum life total is 10. You get an emblem with "Pay 2 life: add one mana of any color" and "At the beginning of your upkeep, you draw a card and lose a life".
Part of me wants to make an Emblem cube where both players cast this... thing... at the start of the game. Greatness At Any Cost: the cube.
(That futuresight Gush is pretty, though.)
EDIT: Of the cards I've seen so far, some of them are clearly jokes (Indicate is a
cost sorcery whose full rule text is "Target creature"...), but there are also some neat designs (a "Bedtime Story" Saga that enters without a lore counter on it and gets lore counters on your end step), as well as some cards that I just straight-up like:Starting Town NPC -
Human Peasant
Each creature card in your hand has a
Adventure sorcery named Fetch Herbs with "You gain 2 life."Each creature card you cast from exile enters with a +1/+1 counter on it.
2/3
All of your creature spells also being sorcery spells is... damn, I love it.
-
Pyromancy 101 -
Sorcery - Lesson
Pyromancy 101 deals 1 damage to any target.
Teach
(Then exile this spell taught to a creature you control. For as long as this card remains exiled, that creature has ": Copy the exiled card. You may cast that copy for its teach cost".)Prowess is drooling.
-
You Compleat Me -
Sorcery
If your life total is greater than 10, it becomes 10. For the rest of the game, your maximum life total is 10. You get an emblem with "Pay 2 life: add one mana of any color" and "At the beginning of your upkeep, you draw a card and lose a life".
Part of me wants to make an Emblem cube where both players cast this... thing... at the start of the game. Greatness At Any Cost: the cube.
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MagicSpoiler has some of them up. Not sure where they got them...
EDIT: Dear Scryfall devs: could you possibly make it easier to search for playtest cards? Currently, performing a search that gives you playtest cards and only playtest cards requires either a pretty convoluted search string or knowing the exact set code for the Mystery Boosters. Please, this is the perfect opportunity to make is=playtest a thing...
(Also, a fun little Scryfall game: what's the shortest search string that will give you all eight My Little Pony cards?)
EDIT: Dear Scryfall devs: could you possibly make it easier to search for playtest cards? Currently, performing a search that gives you playtest cards and only playtest cards requires either a pretty convoluted search string or knowing the exact set code for the Mystery Boosters. Please, this is the perfect opportunity to make is=playtest a thing...
(Also, a fun little Scryfall game: what's the shortest search string that will give you all eight My Little Pony cards?)
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The Bedtime Story saga is actually super interesting, it's a shame that mechanic name seems unlikely to ever be black border:
Night of the Flying Merfolk
2U
Enchantment - Saga
Bedtime Story (Don't put a lore counter on this Saga as it enters. Put a lore counter on it at the beginning of your end step rather than your main phase. Sacrifice after III.)
I - Create two 1/1 blue Merfolk creature tokens.
II - Put a flying counter on each tapped creature you control.
III - Draw a card for each creature you control that dealt combat damage to a player this turn.
It's multiple different ways to incentivize attacking on the same card! It's clever!
Night of the Flying Merfolk
2U
Enchantment - Saga
Bedtime Story (Don't put a lore counter on this Saga as it enters. Put a lore counter on it at the beginning of your end step rather than your main phase. Sacrifice after III.)
I - Create two 1/1 blue Merfolk creature tokens.
II - Put a flying counter on each tapped creature you control.
III - Draw a card for each creature you control that dealt combat damage to a player this turn.
It's multiple different ways to incentivize attacking on the same card! It's clever!
This is like, actually pretty fun and reasonable? Seems like a good midtier 3 drop for low power fair cube stuff. I might actually run this I love these stupid playtest cards but never really had one that fit anywhere before.
Here's a couple other cards that seem actually fun for cube:
This is sick and probably shouldn't also be a 2/2 flyer for 2 but I might run it somewhere anyway because it just seems exciting to play with.
I want to see this cast in a late game do or die situation.
Here's a couple other cards that seem actually fun for cube:
This is sick and probably shouldn't also be a 2/2 flyer for 2 but I might run it somewhere anyway because it just seems exciting to play with.
I want to see this cast in a late game do or die situation.
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Isn't the line between case studies and data blurry here anyway?
What I mean by that, and what I meant in general, is that I don't expect to get anything relatable on what the best red 1-drop is between a 59.2 and a 58.9 % win rate. For these kind of things you need thousands of drafts of course. And even then it is difficult to say. So, I know what I can not get from collecting data like this, but I was wondering, what I could maybe, realistically get from it. Regarding card data, I'm not sure yet. At the very least, I always see which cards have been underdrafted. And for the cards that have 70+ games there are actually some expected tendencies, like premium removal and other firstpickables like BoP having win rates in the 55-70% range. So maybe when I have every card at at least 200 games tested, I can have, taking things like being a card a certain player always plays or such into account, a rough idea of what cards are underperforming, overperforming or are in the middle?
What already did help me, was looking at the archetype data. Even though I can't look at the data and say: green/white is too good. But I can ...
• see which decks and themes did work out so far and which decks and themes have yet to prove themselves (so I can try them)
• get a comprehensive overview of what people are actually playing
• see who is drafting what how often and how successful and thus take it into consideration when looking at cards
Also, all of it has been fun in a super nerdy and weird way.
Yeah I love it. When I first read it I thought it was just a straight up joke card for a second because I thought it was something like "If you would mulligan, look at the top two cards of your library, then mulligan" (which a lot of people just do anyway lol), but what it actually does is awesome and I think it will be a lot of fun to play with.
I do think it will be quite strong in a low power fair cube. You'll be guaranteed to hit a 2/2 flyer on 2 and then most likely also be hitting your land drops, and you get to play the first 2-3 turns with perfect knowledge of the top of your deck. Seems really good for decks that want to curve out.
Yep!
...
Some more cool designs:
Blurry Visionary -
When Blurry Visionary enters, look at the top two cards of your library, then put them back-to-back in the same sleeve with either card in front. They become a modal double-faced card for the rest of the game.
3/2
What a trippy idea. There are so many cheesy things that you can do with this guy.
Immersturm Battlefield -
Enchantment - Realm
Hosted creatures get +2/+0 and haste.
Host
(: Host target creature at this Realm. A Realm can host any number of creatures. Host only as a sorcery.)I'm legitimately surprised that "reverse equipment" isn't an actual mechanic. Heck, I'm kinda surprised that we didn't get something like this in MOM instead of Battles.
...
On the flip side, look at this monstrosity:
Cleaver Blow -
Instant
Multicleave
(You may an additional any number of times as you cast this spell. For each time you do, choose a paired set of square brackets and remove the words in between.)Destroy target [nonblack] creature [with mana value 3 or less] [an opponent controls]. You [and its controller each] draw a card [and lose 2 life]. Create a [tapped] 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying.
My head hurts just trying to parse this.