[Article] The Most Popular Cards, By the Numbers

[Aggro_zombies]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/18204_Legacys_Allure_The_Most_Popular_Cards_By_The_Numbers.html

Excellent number crunching by Doug Linn. Good to see my gut feeling about Counterbalance is true. Thanks for the work, Doug!

[Xero]

I liked it, but I'm surprised that Tarmogoyf wasn't one of the counted cards.

[MMogg]

I don't want to be "that guy" who is criticizing the hard work of others, but the first question I thought was "isn't this kind of common knowledge?" I mean, I feel like I'm missing something. The prevalence of Force of Will and Wasteland is not surprising in the least nor the amount of spot removal. The only kind of surprise is the fact that few Counterbalance decks placed in the top 8, but that does not necessarily mean that they didn't come in the top 16 or were not prevalent in the first rounds of the tournament.

[Aggro_zombies]

I don't want to be "that guy" who is criticizing the hard work of others, but the first question I thought was "isn't this kind of common knowledge?" I mean, I feel like I'm missing something. The prevalence of Force of Will and Wasteland is not surprising in the least nor the amount of spot removal. The only kind of surprise is the fact that few Counterbalance decks placed in the top 8, but that does not necessarily mean that they didn't come in the top 16 or were not prevalent in the first rounds of the tournament.
Common knowledge is one thing, but having statistical evidence for it is another. In a format with as many regional differences as Legacy, it helps to be able to compile this sort of thing from across the board.

Besides, given the number of decks that are designed specifically to prey on Counterbalance (or do so incidentally), I'm surprised that isn't common knowledge. Counterbalance hasn't been THE deck to beat for a while now.

[MMogg]

Common knowledge is one thing, but having statistical evidence for it is another. In a format with as many regional differences as Legacy, it helps to be able to compile this sort of thing from across the board.

Besides, given the number of decks that are designed specifically to prey on Counterbalance (or do so incidentally), I'm surprised that isn't common knowledge. Counterbalance hasn't been THE deck to beat for a while now.

Meh, whether I know there are statistically 30 or 40 or 20 Force of Will doesn't really change any opinion I had previously. It's still the dominate spell of the format and Wasteland isn't far behind. I can kind of see where regional differences might be handy, but metagames are often in flux, especially at big events. Local events – in my humble experience – are often slow to evolve as people bring the same decks over and over. Just look at the Meandeck Open results from Ohio and see how people say the metagame there was fucked up. Anyway, I'm not trying to party poop or criticize pointlessly, I just felt stats on these cards are nearly irrelevant as you should be prepared to face these cards, whether the top 8 numbers show it or not.

[Cthuloo]

Nice article, and interesting result about counterbalance and wasteland (I didn't think it was so ubiquitous, it will be interesting to see if enemy fetches will change those numbers). Even if some results are not surprising at all, it's always nice to have the proof of numbers.

If you are going to make a similar analysis in the future, these are some suggestions about what you could look for:

- # Drawing engines: like confidant, standstill, ringleader, SoFI, FoF, etc. I know it's a broad category, but It will be interesting to know how far a deck can go without a way to make CA, which brings me to...
- # Virtual CA engines: like Deed, Wrath, Chalice, Counter-Top
- # Daze: to know the exact number of free counters, which I think can be important
- Overall # of creatures vs. # of Goyfs : to know to which kind of opposition we should be prerared, and to answer e.g the question: "Is Smother better or worse than Diabolic Edict? How many should I pack?", and similar ones.

[Skeggi]

I don't understand - the data can't be correct. How can there be more Counterbalances than Sensei's Divining Top in the format? Top is being used in more decks than just CounterTop, so there should be more, right?

[Elf_Ascetic]

I don't understand - the data can't be correct. How can there be more Counterbalances than Sensei's Divining Top in the format? Top is being used in more decks than just CounterTop, so there should be more, right?

Some CB lists run only 3 Top and 4 CB.

But next to that, the only thing this proves is that his sample size was way to small.

[Glorfindel]

How can there be more Counterbalances than Sensei's Divining Top in the format?
I can't find where he states that?!

[Skeggi]

Oh right, he's posting there aren't alot of Counterbalance lists. Something I would expect, because I haven't seen alot myself. OTOH, the article confused me because I expected to find a list of the most popular cards. Not a list of some popular cards and then a card that isn't popular.

On one hand I agree with MMOG here: we already knew what Doug Linn is saying here. Anyone who went to a tournament in the last 2 months would have noticed this. But ofcourse, it could be useful for people who haven't.

[Glorfindel]

One can only wonder why CounterTop is still a [DTB].

[DragoFireheart]

One can only wonder why CounterTop is still a [DTB].


Maybe it won't be for long.

[quicksilver]

I don't want to be "that guy" who is criticizing the hard work of others, but the first question I thought was "isn't this kind of common knowledge?" I mean, I feel like I'm missing something. The prevalence of Force of Will and Wasteland is not surprising in the least nor the amount of spot removal. The only kind of surprise is the fact that few Counterbalance decks placed in the top 8, but that does not necessarily mean that they didn't come in the top 16 or were not prevalent in the first rounds of the tournament.

It's always nice to see numbers to back up our assumptions.


One can only wonder why CounterTop is still a [DTB].

The DTB's are determined by how well the decks do. These numbers may be a little miss leading when thinking about deck to beats. All other cards (FOW, Wasteland, and Grip) are generic cards played in many, many, many different decks, while counterbalance is only played in counterbalance decks. So it makes sense for that card to be so much lower in numbers because it is so much more specific. You should fully expect FOW to see more play every single time than counter balance (although one of those tournaments sees 1 more counterbalance than FOW), because counter balance decks always play FOW. So these numbers do show that counterbalance is still making top 8's. to see if it is still a DTB you really need to compare it's success against other decks, not generic cards that span many different decks.

[umbowta]

Nice article for sure.

Favorite Quote:

"I also expected a lot more Paths in aggro decks, but some, like White Weenie, packed Swords, inexplicably. The land is much less relevant than the 4+ life an opponent gains, so I attribute most of it to laziness. "

I laughed.

[hi-val]

I liked it, but I'm surprised that Tarmogoyf wasn't one of the counted cards.

I started thinking about the article and writing it in the scope of "what cards do I need to be aware of when I am building decks?" Thus, cards like Grip, lots of removal, Wasteland, etc., all matter when I'm making awful new decks. Tarmogoyf doesn't matter as much, mainly because the solutions I would pack to other creature problems also apply to it. Since it's a giant animal, I can consider it in some ways to be like Tombstalker or Werebear; that is, if my deck is soft to big, fast attackers, it's soft to most of them, not just Tarm. If I were to put a number to how many Tarmogoyfs pop up in T8s, I'd say it's at least 16.

The sample size is a little small, but I wanted to stick to recent, big events so the data reflected recent trends.

[Nihil Credo]

One can only wonder why CounterTop is still a [DTB].
The DTB was last updated in August, using data from July and earlier. The next update will feature data from August to October.

[Xero]

I started thinking about the article and writing it in the scope of "what cards do I need to be aware of when I am building decks?" Thus, cards like Grip, lots of removal, Wasteland, etc., all matter when I'm making awful new decks. Tarmogoyf doesn't matter as much, mainly because the solutions I would pack to other creature problems also apply to it. Since it's a giant animal, I can consider it in some ways to be like Tombstalker or Werebear; that is, if my deck is soft to big, fast attackers, it's soft to most of them, not just Tarm. If I were to put a number to how many Tarmogoyfs pop up in T8s, I'd say it's at least 16.


I counted the 'goys and got: 12 20 24 24 12 16 0 4 20 12 16. FWIW.

[Arrowni]

I started thinking about the article and writing it in the scope of "what cards do I need to be aware of when I am building decks?" Thus, cards like Grip, lots of removal, Wasteland, etc., all matter when I'm making awful new decks. Tarmogoyf doesn't matter as much, mainly because the solutions I would pack to other creature problems also apply to it. Since it's a giant animal, I can consider it in some ways to be like Tombstalker or Werebear; that is, if my deck is soft to big, fast attackers, it's soft to most of them, not just Tarm. If I were to put a number to how many Tarmogoyfs pop up in T8s, I'd say it's at least 16.

The sample size is a little small, but I wanted to stick to recent, big events so the data reflected recent trends.

You should have put this logic in the article, it would save you from making the same observation in several forums :tongue:

[Jon Stewart]

As I said before, I think CB+Top is over hyped esp with all the hate running around for it. It's a two card combo where both pieces are very vulnerable to lots of removal. Plus it doesn't win the game asap like other two card combos (Stifle Nought) and even one card combos (Natural Order).

I also think it was premature to lock all the different thresh lists and merge them all into one all encompassing CB+Top thread that now has four different discussions (Ugb, Ugw and Ugr and 4cc etc) going on in it simultanously and is very confusing to follow. We will likely see more and more Thresh decks top 8 go back to not running CB+Top once the hype dies down a bit more and a the hate kicks in more, and they won't all be Canadian Thresh lists. I'm surprised it hasn't already happened.