
Using Historical Data To Rank The Top Magic: The Gathering Cards - kernelcurry
http://leve.rs/blog/using-historical-data-to-rank-the-top-magic-the-gathering-cards/
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rb2e
As someone who for a time bought MTG cards, in the secondary market, there is
real money to be made in apps with analyzing financial data.

The secondary market is like a stock market only without regulations, has high
fluctuations and swings. Oh and the God of world, Hasbro can reprint most
cards in new sets except for a few on the reserve list at wil. Overnight a
card can rise or fall. There are many people trying to predict the next swing
and trying to get in on the ground floor.

If you're good at analyzing data, can grasp the game quickly and understand
why certain cards are more valuable than others, then there is a great
opportunity to "sell shovels to gold diggers".

The main market is [http://magic.tcgplayer.com/](http://magic.tcgplayer.com/)
for the US. [http://www.starcitygames.com/](http://www.starcitygames.com/) is
the one everyone watches. If they begin to buy up cards and force up prices or
slash prices, the market notices. If you have a spare weekend, take a look.
Might make a good side project.

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dccoolgai
Back when I played (15 yrs back?) Black Lotus was the consensus "top" card...
I don't even see it on that list, so I'm guessing the game has changed a
lot...

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macimumloam
There are now many formats where only certain cards are legal. This post is
about Legacy, where Black Lotus is banned due to its insane power level. Lotus
is really only legal in Vintage, and even then a deck can only have 1

~~~
gyom
I read a comment from Richard Garfield in the days of "Revised edition" and he
said that one of the flaws of Black Lotus was that there was no deck that
could not be made better with the addition of Black Lotus.

It's an auto-include. A no-brainer. Everybody wants one. Every deck benefits
from having it, and that's why it defeats the spirit of the game and should be
left out of future editions.

So, you could say that it's because it's so powerful that it's an auto-
include, but then that leads to a discussion about cards that are powerful on
their own and what cards are enablers.

~~~
macimumloam
That's very true, especially considering the members of the Power Nine. None
of these cards win you the game by themselves by dealing damage or milling,
but they are just huge enablers for almost any strategy.

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martinshen
This has been done a lot in the card game Dominion
([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10867765/genetic-
algorith...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10867765/genetic-algorithm-
for-a-card-game-dominion)). Dominion has orders of magnitudes less cards than
Magic the Gathering.

I've always wondered how a machine would solve for these complex games... How
do you build AI to play a combination and reaction reliant game?

~~~
robrenaud
This is the best actually implemented approach that I know for general
dominion.

[http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/DominionAI.html](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/DominionAI.html)

There was some pretty good discussion on our dominion strategy forum by the
author at
[http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=7036.0](http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=7036.0)

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idoh
It's interesting that the fetch lands are rated higher than the dual lands.
With Deathrite / Brainstorm / Tarmogoyf etc are they actually better?

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gyom
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they can retrieve dual lands.
(disclaimer : I'm not an expert)

You could, for example, run a two-color deck with 4 dual lands and 12
fetchlands. You retrieve the dual lands first (if you don't care about
Wastelands) and then you get basic lands.

Does that mean that fetch lands are 3 times as popular ? Yeah, kinda, but if
you had a choice between using only dual lands or only fetch lands, maybe the
decision would favor dual lands in many contexts.

~~~
nmat
Besides, fetch lands allow you to dry your deck. After you use a fetchland you
are less likely to draw a land card.

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sliverstorm
Wasteland is an interesting result. I've watched it come and go as the
metagame changes, and I also can't help but wonder is it the most powerful
_land_? Or truly the second most powerful _card_.

~~~
gyom
I thought the article was mostly about "most used" instead of "most powerful",
but I admit not having taken the time to understand it well enough.

If it's just about "most used", then it's probably because Wastelands fits
almost everywhere and it's good disruption.

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jhspaybar
I guess given that they're looking at deck lists things that were insanely
broken aren't going to be represented. Skullclamp is possibly the best card to
ever exist and nowhere to be found. Jace at 19, I guess maybe it's not played
across lots of formats? Though, given just how truly broken it is I'd expect
pretty much any blue deck in any format to have 3 or 4 of them. Very cool
stats though, I loved looking through it and going "oh man yea, that was an
AWESOME card" :)

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apocolyps6
This is specifically looking at the legacy format, in which Skullclamp is
banned, thats the same reason that Jace is where he is. Many slow blue decks
in Legacy want to play Jace, but that is not an overwhelmingly huge set of
decks.

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pdknsk
OT, but I couldn't help notice how similar name and icon are to LEVEL-5.

[http://level5ia.com/](http://level5ia.com/)

~~~
Danieru
On a similar note while LEVEL-5 is a prolific company when I first saw their
logo my mind would jump to vBulletin:
[http://www.vbulletin.com/](http://www.vbulletin.com/)

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herbig
Brainstorm is no surprise. That card is the reason so many people enjoy the
format still.

~~~
herbig
Also, this type of ranking can be somewhat misleading. Ad Nauseum doesn't
appear anywhere on the list, however all of the cards that support it do
(Infernal Tutor, Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal).

This is because any deck playing the card typically only plays one copy,
because it is bad to play in multiples.

~~~
sliverstorm
That's because the cards that support it are the _actually_ powerful cards!
Without them, you can't pull it off. Without Ad Nauseum, there is doubtless a
slightly less powerful alternative to be found.

For example, brain geyser was an easy finisher in a deck built around
generating stupid amounts of mana, and it also had secondary utility. But
there are many cards that can do the same job almost as well.

You'll notice the trend if you peruse lists of restricted cards. It's always
the catalyst that is restricted.

~~~
herbig
The point is that this ranking factors in the number of copies of a card
played, but that use as a metric can be misleading.

Would Vendilion Clique rank higher on the list if it weren't legendary?
Probably. It's not that it's a less powerful card than others higher up the
list, it's that you get diminishing returns for playing more than one.

The card text on Ad Nauseum prohibits playing more than a few copies in order
to make it powerful. If the card worked a different way, such as if you paid 1
life for 1 card, you would certainly be playing four of them. Would it rank
higher than the catalysts? No. But that's not the point.

