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By: oraymw, Oraymw
Jul 05 2012 8:26am
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The Magic 2013 prerelease is less than a week away, and it would be an understatement to say that I’m excited, and I think that the majority of the Magic community thinks that it is about time for a change from AVR limited. With this article, my goal is to give you some statistics from M13 and past sets in order to orient your understanding of the environment and the cards that are in it.

Since Magic 2013 has not been released on MTGO, I can’t go and watch hundreds of games and give you the data about what people are playing. However, what I can do is break down the numbers on the cards that are in the format and show you how those numbers compare to numbers from past sets. I typically do these kinds of analyses for myself before a set comes out, and it usually gives me a huge jump start on understanding the format. This time, I decided to bring this analysis to Ars Arcanum and show it to the rest of the world.

In this article, I’ll be approaching things like the mana costs of creatures in the environment, as well as their power and toughness. I’ll be graphing this to show you how this comparison falls across the spectrum. I’ll also be comparing this data to the same data from past formats. I’ll take a look at the themes in the set, like Exalted, and see what the numbers tell us about how they will affect the environment.

I won’t be analyzing card by card; that is the province of a lot of other people. You have enough of those people, and this article is meant to give you a picture of how the cards will most likely interact with each other. This kind of analysis can’t tell you the best color in the format, but it will help you when you look at the cards so that you can have some idea of what they will actually do when they are in play. This is a limited preview, meant to help you make your own determinations about the set.

Creatures

Limited is about creatures, and the first step to understanding any format is to understand the creatures. The quality of every card depends on its relationship to the creatures in the set. For example, a card like Staggershock would be along the lines of a Rare powered card in nearly every limited set ever. But in RoE, it was well balanced at common, since the creatures you needed to kill usually had more than two toughness. Kraken Hatchling was actively good in ZZW, mainly because of the need to block early creatures with 2 or 3 power. One of the reasons why Vampire Nighthawk was such a bomb in that set was because of the huge number of 2 power creatures, which Nighthawk could eat all day long. Glory Seeker was first pickable in Onslaught, simply because nearly everything in the set was a 2/2 for 3, and having Grizzly Bears put you far ahead of the curve.

The question, then, is what do we learn when we look at the overall patterns of creatures in M13? Before we took a look at the graphs, let me explain a little of my methodology for getting these numbers. One of the mistakes that people make when they analyze a limited format is that they don’t account for the rarity of cards. A Common has a much higher influence on a format than a Mythic Rare. However, if you just record the power and toughness of every creature in the set, and take the average, the Mythic Rares are going to tend to drag that average up a significant amount. The key  to looking at a format is to correctly weight the rarity of different cards.

In Magic 2013, as well as the last three core sets, there are 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares. In a given booster pack, there will be 1 basic land, 10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic rare. The rare slot is distributed with 1 mythic in every 8 packs, which gives us 7/8 of a rare in each pack on average, and 1/8 of a mythic in each pack on average. This can tell us what a given pack is going to look like, but drafting doesn’t happen with only one pack. What we get is 24 packs; three for each of the eight players at the table.

When we run these numbers, we see that there is an average of 2.376238 of each common in a given draft. It could be more, it could be less, but on average that is the number of, say, Prey Upon that will be in a Magic 2013 draft. This number for the other rarities is as follows: 1.2 uncommons, 0.396226 rares, and .2 mythic rares. These numbers help us to see how much of a given card we expect to see in a draft, like that we will see a Jace, Memory Adept in about one in five Magic 2013 drafts. We can also use these numbers to help us see trends over the entire format.

M13 Creatures – Casting Cost, Power, and Toughness

 

Creature Statistic Averages

Casting Cost

3.145629

Power

2.170568

Toughness

2.454161

Differential for Average P/T

-0.28359

 For the following chart, I recorded the Casting Cost, Power, and Toughness of every creature in Magic 2013. I then totaled the numbers in each rarity. Afterwards, I multiplied these numbers by their rarity weights, and added them together. What this chart shows is the number of cards on each of these data points that we will see in a given draft. For example, in a Magic 2013 draft, we will see an average of 42.28 creatures with a converted mana cost of 4. We’ll see 56.76 creatures with 2 power, and about 53.57 creatures with 2 toughness. The table below the chart shows the averages of these statistics, and the Differential for Average P/T. The last statistic is the difference between power and toughness. It is common for a set to have a lower average power than toughness, because power is stronger. This means that sets with a large negative differential tend to be slower formats, while sets with a differential that is close to zero, or even positive, tend to be formats that are very fast.

It is hard to look at this data and figure out what exactly it means, without something for comparison. To that end, I’ve included the same chart from M12:

There are a few important things to note about this data. The first thing is casting cost. An average converted mana cost of 3.146 is actually very low. AVR, for example, had an average converted mana cost of 3.43, which meant that it was short on two drops. By looking at the chart, we see that M13 has a large number of 2, 3, and 4 drops. It is important to know that formats are often defined by what is hard to obtain; AVR had a shortage of 2 drops, which contributed to it being a fast format, because a deck that got a lot of 2 drops could simply outrace all the other decks. In M13, however, it should not be hard for every deck to get a decent curve of early game creatures. Instead, we see a low number of 5 and 6 drops. It may be difficult to get the kind of cards that you need to close out the late game.

Another thing  is that we see numbers for power and toughness spike sooner than Casting Cost. This is actually normal; it means that there are a number of creatures with a casting cost of 3 or 4 that have one or two power. But there are two important things to get from that spike. First, it is typical for a format to have around 40 two and three drops. However, most sets will have around 40 cards per draft with one power and between 60 and 70 cards per draft at two power. That means that this set has a higher than average number of one power creatures and a lower than average number of two power creatures.

The third important point to note about this chart is the location of the inflection point, or the point where power and toughness drop below Casting Cost. For Magic 2013, this is at three, but for most sets the inflection point is around 2.5. This is because Magic 2013 has a low number of efficient creatures for 3 or less mana, but that the creatures tend to become more efficient than average as you go up the curve.

The last thing is the difference between power and toughness. When we look at the M12 chart, we see that power spikes at two, while toughness spikes at one. We then see toughness tend to lag behind power. This is because M12 has P/T Differential that is very close to zero, which contributes to making it a very fast format. There are a lot of cheap creatures with higher power than toughness; these types of creatures tend to like to attack more often, since they will usually trade at worst. In M13, however, we see that the numbers for power and toughness are almost dead even when they spike, and then power falls below toughness until we get to five. This means that there are a lot of creatures in have more power than toughness, which means that they will be defensive more often, which makes it hard for creatures to get through in the early game.

All of these factors tend to point towards M13 being a relatively slow set. But relative to what? For the next section, we’ll be comparing these numbers to the same numbers from M12, M11, and AVR, in order to gain a better understanding of how this set will fit in with other sets.

Comparing Sets

 

M13

M12

M11

AVR

Casting Cost

3.145629

3.347977

3.227572

3.437784

Power

2.170568

2.339989

2.419726

2.581033

Toughness

2.454161

2.367317

2.613718

2.457777

Differential for Average P/T

-0.28359

-0.02733

-0.19399

0.123257

 The above table shows the averages for the key stats through the past three core sets, and it also includes AVR, since that was the most recent set that we’ve drafted.

The first category is Casting Cost. We see that M13 has the lowest average casting cost of the four sets. It is worth noting that M12 and AVR are the two sets with higher average casting costs, even though they are also both fast formats. This is counterintuitive, but as mentioned before, much of limited formats depends on what is hard to get rather than what is easily available. Sets like M12 and AVR reward players more for having aggressive starts since many decks end up having slightly higher curves. Sets like M13 and M11 will reward players who play cards that provide them with more resources. Cards like Divination are powerful in these types of formats because decks are more easily able to empty their hands, stall out the board, and begin to have top deck battles.

The next key thing is that we see that M13 has the lowest average power per creature of the four sets. M12 had a lower power per creature, but it is important to note that many of the creatures in M12 also had bloodthirst, which increases their average power. AVR ends up having the highest average power, and that is without taking into account the fact that there are a lot of powerful tempo plays like Mist Raven, or cards that can greatly increase in power, like Kruin Striker into a Thatcher Revolt. Creatures with high power efficiency tend to be very aggressive, since they are so difficult to block. M13 trails the other sets by a significant amount.

In Toughness, M13 is the second lowest, though it is much closer to the other colors in toughness than in power. What is most important is the P/T Differential. M13 scores with the largest negative differential, with -.08 more than M11. Both of the fast sets were close to zero or higher; AVR has a positive .123 P/T Differential, which indicates a very fast format. This number is important, because it indicates how well creatures will be able to attack into other creatures. In M13, creatures will usually be facing down other creatures with Toughness higher than their power, which can greatly slow down a format.

Creature Casting Cost Comparison: M13 vs. M12

Our next chart shows a comparison between the creatures of converted mana cost per draft between M13 and M12. We see that both sets have about the same number of one, two, and three drops, though M12 has a few more two drops. We then see that M13 has significantly more four drops, though it has fewer cards in the five to seven slot. Again, this data seems to suggest a format where it isn’t too hard to fill out a curve with early drops. It is worth noting that M12 cards tended to have higher Power for their cost; the ones through three in M12 tended to be more aggressive, while those in M13 will often be more defensive.

Creature Power Comparison: M13 vs. AVR

Here we can take a look at the power of creatures per draft in M13 compared to that of AVR. We see that M13 has more creatures at one power, but then lags behind AVR in every higher category, only coming close to AVR at 5 power. Creatures in M13 just tend to be a little less aggressive, which has a big impact on the speed of the format when spread out over several drafters.

Creature Toughness Comparison: M13 vs. M11

In this chart, we see a comparison of toughness between M13 and M11. What is important about this information is how similar the two charts are. M11 drags behind in the one and two slots, but this is mostly due to the token generators in M13. Since these token generators are not taking up the slots normally reserved for creatures, there is simply a higher amount of creatures in this format than in most formats. The two toughnesses that are most important for this chart are the threes and fours, which is the range where a creature is able to profitably block something with two power, which is the most common power.

We’ve already covered what this means in general for the format. Overall, it looks like a format that will be slower than average, with a lot of creatures that have higher toughness and lower power, meaning that creatures will often be unable to attack profitably. This generally leads to more board stalls. But all of this is abstract. What does it mean when we apply it to the specifics of the game.

Cards and Specifics

I’ve already established that M13 looks like it will be a slower format that leads to more board stalls. It is a format where you shouldn’t have too hard of a time filling out your early curve, and one with a lot of defensive creatures. In this section, I’m going to address some of the cards that do these things, and also talk about what exalted does in the format.

   

M13 is a pretty defensive format, and the above four cards are going to be the main culprits. Except for Red, each color has a creature that is powerfully defensively, while being weak offensively. Giant Scorpion and Deadly Recluse are especially good at large creatures. Giant Scorpion can often hold often entire teams of attackers.

In addition to these blockers, we also have a few key token makers, specifically in White and Red. Attended Knight and Captain’s Call each make 1/1 white soldier tokens, while Krenko’s Command makes two 1/1 red goblins. 1/1 creatures tend to be less good at attacking, since most creatures can eat them, but they are especially good at blocking; they can often gang up with another creature so that your 2/2 can trade with a 3/3, or they can chump block a large creature to keep your opponent from winning in an alpha strike.

Because we expect this format to have stalled boards, we should address the two main kinds of stalls, which are Wide battles compared to Tall battles. A Wide battle is one in which you are trying to win the game by putting more creatures on the board than your opponent, so that you can make an alpha strike and bring them to zero. Wide battles tend to be won by the person who keeps making careful attacks and blocks that give him or her a lot of card advantage over the course of the game. Tall battles are stalled boards where neither player is going to be able to make a lethal alpha strike. This means that they can’t commit to an attack, because their opponent could then attack them back. Instead, these players focus on getting one or two creatures through. Typically this means either an evasive creature or a large creature. Most stalled boards end up being a mix of the two types, though they will have more of one than the other.

Exalted is an example of a Tall mechanic. It allows you to make a small creature very large so that it can trade up with your opponent’s big creatures. Also, it turns any evasive creature into a powerful threat. It is not a Wide mechanic because the total power of all of your exalted creatures will tend to be very low; cards like Aven Squire are good when you have one creature attacking, but they don’t add as much as a Welkin Tern when you are attacking with everything. Each of these strategies has their own advantages. Tall mechanics allow you to get in damage on an otherwise stalled board, which means that you will often win the long game. However, Tall mechanics are not powerful if you don’t have creatures to provide defense. The player who has more creatures will often have more total power on the board, and if all of your creatures are 1/1 flyers, then you are going to get killed pretty quickly by the guy with a bunch of Grizzly Bears and (Hill Giants).

                 

I have heard a lot about how aggressive the WB Exalted deck is supposed to be in Magic 2013, but that is simply a misunderstanding of the above information. Aven Squire and Guardians of Akrasa are not inherently aggressive creatures; they each only add one power to the board, which is low for a two CMC creature, and even lower for a three CMC. Exalted is bad at closing games out quickly. But it is good at closing out stalled boards, since it can turn a 1/1 into a 3/3. Only one creature can attack per turn, but you can attack with a creature that is large enough to trade without compromising your defenses.

Tall mechanics like Exalted are also particularly vulnerable to removal. When your opponent has six 2/2s on the battlefield, drawing a Murder isn’t going to help much. But when your opponent has a bunch of small creatures and a Vastwood Gorger, Wind Drake, or Aven Squire, Murder represents a very big swing. If you attack with an evasive creature, and put a bunch of Exalted triggers on the stack, it will often be killed by instant speed removal, which not only kills a creature, but also fogs your board for a turn.

Because of all these factors, I expect the best decks in the format to be card advantage focused decks with evasive creatures and a smattering of Exalted. Cards like Liliana’s Shade seem particularly powerful in this format. It finds a land out of your deck, which gives you some card advantage and allows you to leverage the late game, but it also turns into a powerful tall attacker that works well with exalted. It won’t be hard to turn Liliana’s Shade into a 5/5 creature on the attack, which can take down two blockers. Vampire Nighthawk ought to be amazing when it picks up an Exalted trigger or two. Talrand’s Invocation gives you two evasive creatures in a format where evasion is even more important.

If I had to pick a color that I expect to be the best, I would say it is Black. It gets some powerful exalted creatures, like Duty-Bound Dead, and plenty of great defensive creatures. It gets three powerful removal spells at common in Murder, Essence Drain, and Crippling Blight. It gets card advantage spells like Mind Rot, Ravenous Rats, and Sign in Blood which are powerful in a slow format.  Ravenous Rats can even attack with Exalted Triggers and expect to trade up. Finally, it gets cards that are especially good on stalled boards like Bloodthrone Vampire and Liliana’s Shade. I think that Black is well positioned to be the best color in the format, but we certainly won’t know for sure until after we see the cards in action.

 

Instants and Sorceries

One of the extra themes in Magic 2013 is the Blue focus on Instants and Sorceries. We don’t get too many cards that emphasize this theme, but we do have Archaeomancer, Augur of Bolas, Spelltwine, and Talrand, Sky Summoner. One of my questions when researching the format was whether Archaeomancer and Augur of Bolas were actually going to be good, which depends a lot on the spells in the format. I decided to find out the average number of Instants and Sorceries per draft overall and in each color, in order to figure out what color combinations would be best able to make use of these cards.

Color

PerDraft

White

18.62612

Blue

24.60235

Black

21.42234

Red

24.80235

Green

24.57859

 This table shows the average number of instants in each color per draft. What most surprised me was the performance of Green, which is generally known as a creature color. However, White and Black both make extensive use of Enchantments, which limits their effectiveness when paired with Archaeomancer or Augur of Bolas. It is also important to note how many of these cards we can expect to get in a deck; if we stick to Blue/Green or Blue/Red, then we will get 6-7 Instants or Sorceries on average in a draft. We can expect one or two more to come our way from people who aren't in our colors, so we are probably looking at 7-9 in a given draft. Around half of these will not be good, and a quarter will be all but unplayable, and that is in the combination with the most instants and sorceries. The trick, then, is to make a three color deck. If we go with URG, then we will get access to 14-18 Instants or Sorceries. If we expect half of these to be good, then we can probably put together 7 to 9 playable Instants and Sorceries. That is the point at which Archaeomancer and Augur of Bolas start to become good.

The trick, then, is to build a three color deck that is base Blue and Green, but which splashes Red for powerful removal spells like Flames of the Firebrand or Searing Spear. Farseek is particularly important, since it fixes your mana, and also turns on Archaeomancer and Augur of Bolas. The token makers, Talrand’s Invocation, Krenko’s Command, and Fungal Sprouting allow you to keep your creature count high while still having enough Instants and Sorceries. Roaring Primox is especially good since it allows you to replay your Archaeomancers and Augur of Bolas, and you should have enough extra mana on account of Farseek. You also don’t take too much of a hit on creatures, since Green has a lot of powerful creatures at all the commonalities.

I can promise that this will not be the best deck in the format. It might not even be a good deck. But if you are the kind of person that wants to make Archaeomancer work, this seems like the best option. The deck is certainly viable since there are enough powerful spells to give you enough upside. The format also seems to be slow enough to allow you to put together the right pieces. You have the potential of recurring Unsummon to deal with Exalted creatures, or Talrand’s Invocation to provide a significant board presence. If you are looking for a Johnny type of deck to try in M13, you might want to try it out. If your goal is to win as often as possible, you should probably stay away.

Recommendations

In the end, we are able to learn a few key things about Magic 2013.

1. The numbers indicate that Magic 2013 will be a slow format. Evasive creatures and card advantage spells tend to gain value in these types of formats.

2. Magic 2013 has a large negative Power/Toughness differential, which means that creatures will often have lower power than the toughness of their opponent’s blockers. This leads to stalled boards.

3. Evasive creatures and Exalted are particularly strong in stalled formats.

4. Black seems to have the tools to perform well in this type of environment.

5. Archaeomancer is probably unplayable outside of a URG deck.

Hopefully this information will prepare you to best take advantage of the environment. I know that I’m particularly excited for Magic 2013, and I can promise that I’ll be exploring every nook and cranny of the format.

One item to note is that the release of Magic 2013 is not until July 30th. After the online release, I’ll be watching games and recording statistics to put together a Limited Overview for the set. In the meantime, I’ll be covering other formats. I’m not sure if MTGO will have any special formats going on between the prerelease and the MTGO release. If they do, then I will take advantage of those events. I’m especially hopeful that there will be Cube drafts or Nix Tix drafts for an old format, which would lead to an interesting article. You can follow me on twitter @oraymw for updates about articles or to see what I’ll be covering next time.

Until next time, have fun at the Magic 2013 prerelease.

Ars Arcanum Archive

6 Comments

Out of interest, did you by StealthBadger at Thu, 07/05/2012 - 12:46
StealthBadger's picture

Out of interest, did you count the flinthoof boar cycle powered up? I imagine most of the time that they're played, they will be and I think they're commons so they might impact the averages a bit?

EDIT: turns out they're uncommons, so the averages are probably pretty close either way.

As with any set, simply by oraymw at Thu, 07/05/2012 - 12:56
oraymw's picture

As with any set, simply running numbers isn't effective. There is a reason why Humans are better at Magic than Computers.

To answer your question, I counted that cycle as if you would have the requisite land in play. In the case of cards like this, you have to make a judgement based on how you think they will be played. And you are correct to assume that it would move up the averages... which is even more telling about the speed of the format and the size of the creatures. Even with those cards moving things up, the creatures are still small on average.

Interesting terminology. Tall by Paul Leicht at Thu, 07/05/2012 - 14:38
Paul Leicht's picture
5

Interesting terminology. Tall and Wide make a lot of sense as labels for what people have known for years. The charts are pretty cool, I assume you have a program (excel?) that does the work for you?

I overheard some people using by oraymw at Thu, 07/05/2012 - 14:59
oraymw's picture

I overheard some people using the terms Tall and Wide before, but didn't actually hear what they meant by them. So I just stole the terms and adapted them semantically.

As for the charts, yes, I use Excel.

Several people have mentioned by oraymw at Thu, 07/05/2012 - 15:46
oraymw's picture

Several people have mentioned Wall of Fire to me as a defensive red common. It is correct in the calculations, but for some reason I had thought it was an uncommon when I was doing the write up. It just goes to further demonstrate how this format is a lot more focused on defense than offense.

Life gain by Marcelo Tiellet at Fri, 07/06/2012 - 15:03
Marcelo Tiellet's picture
5

Once upon a time, I saw a column on the mothership saying that they would avoid good lifelink creatures on common because that would cause the limited games to be too long. Looking at this set, i think that they forgot that or they were wrong before.