Wouldn’t it be nice if you could figure out which card actually gives you an edge in your deck? Is [card]Sol Ring[/card] any better than say [card]Cultivate[/card]? Are you better off with [card]Counterspell[/card] or [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card]? If you were to use EDHREC card database to figure this out, you would find that [card]Counterspell[/card] is present in 58,335 decks while [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] is present in 6,650 decks. But can we back off this finding with real gameplay data?
Recently, the CommandZone team released two podcasts: “Exactly How Good is Sol Ring?” and “Which Color Is the Strongest?” that presented results from analyzing over 300 commander games. Some of their observations are mind-boggling. For instance, playing a [card]Sol Ring[/card] or [card]Mana Crypt[/card] in the first three turns actually decreased the chances of winning a game by 4.4%…
I listened to these two podcasts with great interest. Some of the results that they presented compared the actual game data with Twitter polls they had performed with their user base. For instance, on the question of increased win percentage of playing a [card]Sol Ring[/card] or [card]Mana Crypt[/card] in the first three turns, the polls showed that 15% believed that it would have little to no advantage (0-2%), 52% thought it made a moderate amount of difference (3-5%), 29% thought it would make a big difference (6%+) and 4% that it would be detrimental. So if we are basing deck-building choices on players’ instinct, are we missing the point?
Toward the end of the second podcast, Josh and DJ talked about individual cards and how some of them performed better than what was expected of them. For instance, [card]Mulldrifter[/card] was in ninth place as far as most played card in the games they surveyed, but jumped in fifth place as far as presence in the winningest decks. [card]Enlightened Tutor[/card] was present in 27% of the decks, but 39% of the winning decks has [card]Enlightened Tutor[/card] in them.
The CommandZone was kind enough to make their datapublic and I was very curious to find out more about card performance. Were there any cards that fared much better than expected? Were there cards that were actual duds? Some of the results are quite surprising.
A couple of observations about the methodology before we start: First, the sample of the game survey is not very large, so this is not a scientific experiment, but the sample is big enough that we can report on some interesting trends. Secondly, when deciding if a card was part of a winning deck, the CommandZone team did not watch each and every game from start to finish to figure out if a card was played or not in the winning game. Instead, they recorded it as part of a winning deck if it were present in the deck list. I did the same. If we would actually know all cards that were played for each game, then our results would be much more precise. One would hope that we have a large enough sample size that this would not matter, because on average, the cards would come out often enough that we could see a trend. I did take some measures to circumvent this problem however, for instance eliminating cards that did not appear often enough.
There is so much data to digest, so many cards to evaluate, it is not possible to present the results of this analysis in one article. I will now present some general results and some in depth result based on card categories. In follow up articles, I will take a look at the results in the context of different color combinations.
The ten most played cards in the CommandZone surveyed games were: Sol Ring[/card], [card]Solemn Simulacrum[/card], [card]Lightning Greaves[/card], [card]Cultivate[/card], [card]Swiftfoot Boots[/card], [card]Skullclamp[/card], [card]Kodama’s Reach[/card], [card]Mind Stone[/card], [card]Chromatic Lantern[/card] and [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card]. [card]Sol Ring[/card] was played in 810 of the 1264 decks. However, it was only played in 204 winning decks and 606 losing decks. If [card]Sol Ring[/card] was as good as what the deckbuilders thought it would be, it should be in 64% of the winning decks, but instead, it was in 50% of the winning decks. If we order the cards by win percentage, [card]Sol Ring[/card] ends up in the 222ndspot out of 9319 distinct cards used in the surveyed games (not bad, but a bit far from what we would expect).
The ten best performing cards are: [card]Eternal Witness[/card], [card]Enlightened Tutor[/card], [card]Kodama’s Reach[/card], [card]Cultivate[/card], [card]Vampiric Tutor[/card], [card]Sakura-Tribe Elder[/card], [card]Demonic Tutor[/card], [card]Skullclamp[/card], [card]Increasing Ambition[/card] and [card]Triumph of the Hordes[/card].
Some of the cards that performed better than expected: [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], which climbed from rank 1003 to 58 (+945), while [card]Astral Cornucopia[/card] climbed from 749 to 25 (+724), [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] climbed from 743 to 98 (+645), [card]Pernicious Deed[/card] climbed from 619 to 87 (+532), [card]Arachnogenesis[/card] climbed from 496 to 24 (+472), [card]Elves of the Deep Shadow[/card] climbed from 534 to 79 (+455) and [card]Eldritch Evolution[/card] climbed from 462 to 18 (+444).
On the other end of the spectrum, the cards that did not perform as well as expected: [card]Solemn Simulacrum[/card] dropped 111 spots from 2ndto 113th. [card]Burnished Hart[/card] dropped 648 spots from 13thplace to 648th. [card]Sword to Plowshares[/card] dropped 447 places from 10thplace to 457th. [card]Sun Titan[/card] dropped 508 spots from 48thto 552nd. [card]Decree of Pain[/card] dropped 169 spots from 25thto 194th.
Now ranking can greatly be influenced by the commander’s color identity. For instance, in the data mentioned above, to be able to compare cards from all colors together, I have used a five-color color identity. In this scenario, [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] is ranked 457th, most likely because there are better creature removal spells in other colors. However, in a mono-white deck, [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] is ranked 94rd. This is not as good as expected (8thmost played card in mono-white), but better than in a five-color environment. As a side note, [card]Path to Exile[/card] seems to fare much better, sitting at rank 25th, which makes it a legitimate card to play in Commander.
If we look at [card]Sol Ring[/card], in a five-color deck, it is ranked 222nd. However, in an Orzhov build, it ranks 95thand in a mono-white build, it now sits at 39.
Lets now look at the card categories, starting with mana ramp. As far as mana ramp is concerned, two trends show up depending on availability of green in the commander’s color identity. When green is available, the best ramp cards, [card]Kodama’s Reach[/card], [card]Cultivate[/card], [card]Sakura-Tribe Elder[/card], [card]Skyshroud Claim[/card], [card]Wayfarer’s Bauble[/card], [card]Liliana of the Dark Realms[/card], [card]Fyndhorn Elves[/card], [card]Harrow[/card], [card]Wood Elves[/card] and [card]Llanowar Elves[/card], are mostly green. When green is not available, the cards that stand out are mostly colorless: [card]Wayfarer’s Bauble[/card], [card]Liliana of the Dark Realms[/card], [card]Astral Cornucopia[/card], [card]Expedition Map[/card], [card]Thought Vessel[/card], [card]Izzet Signet[/card], [card]Chrome Mox[/card], [card]Phyrexian Altar[/card], [card]Everflowing Chalice[/card] and [card]Solemn Simulacrum[/card]. It is interesting to note that [card]Izzet Signet[/card] at 22ndplace is the only signet in the top 100 cards, Orzhov Signet at 227thplace is the second best.
It is not too surprising to see that the most effective mana ramp cards are those that bring lands to the battlefield as opposed to artifacts that produce mana. The Command Zone gameplay stats found that the player with the most lands at end of game won 40% of the time compared to 18% for those who had less lands at end of game.
For card disruption, the best performing cards are: [card]Krosan Grip[/card], [card]Beast Within[/card], [card]Nature’s Claim[/card], [card]Phyrexian Reclamation[/card], [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card], [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], [card]Reverberate[/card], [card]Shriekmaw[/card], [card]Putrefy[/card] and [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card].
With the exception of [card]Shriekmaw[/card] and [card]Phyrexian Reclamation[/card], the best disruption spells are able to deal with multiple card types. [card]Beast Within[/card], [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] and [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] can target permanents of any type. [card]Krosan Grip[/card] and [card]Nature’s Claim[/card] can target any artifact or enchantment. [card]Putrefy[/card] can target creatures and artifacts.
For card advantage, the best performing cards are: [card]Skullclamp[/card], [card]Sylvan Library[/card], [card]Harmonize[/card], [card]Dark Petition[/card], [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], [card]Syphon Mind[/card], [card]Praetor’s Counsel[/card], [card]Brainstorm[/card], [card]Grim Haruspex[/card] and [card]Mulldrifter[/card]. There seems to be is a good balance between black, green and blue as a source of card advantage. Card advantage is an important aspect of a winning strategy and this might explain why black, green and blue have been found to be the best three colors to play according the Command Zone gameplay stats.
For wrath-like effect, the best performing cards are: [card]Toxic Deluge[/card], [card]Bane of Progress[/card], [card]Cyclonic Rift[/card], [card]In Garruk’s Wake[/card], [card]Crux of Fate[/card], [card]Pernicious Deed[/card], [card]Deathbringer Regent[/card], [card]Fumigate[/card], [card]Decree of Pain[/card] and [card]Aura Shards[/card].
It is hard to understand why a card like [card]Crux of Fate[/card] would perform better than a card like [card]Damnation[/card], unless it would always be played in a deck with Dragons. For the other cards however, either the card only affect opponents, or there is an up-side to clearing the board (gaining life, drawing cards, only affecting cards of a certain toughness or CMC cost). This might explain why cards like [card]Wrath of Gods[/card], [card]Day of Judgment[/card], [card]Austere Command[/card] or [card]Nevinyrall’s Disk[/card] are so low down the list.
For general-purpose creatures, the best performing cards are: [card]Avenger of Zendikar[/card], [card]Zulaport Cutthroat[/card], [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card], [card]Laboratory Maniac[/card], [card]Butcher of Malakir[/card], [card]Mycoloth[/card], [card]Blood Artist[/card], [card]Sangromancer[/card], [card]Kokusho, the Evening Star[/card] and [card]Selfless Spirit[/card].
According the Command Zone gameplay stats, 11% of the players are eliminated by combos. This may explain why we are seeing [card]Laboratory Maniac[/card] in the above list.
That’s it for today. In next article, I will start delving into the color combinations by presenting the findings for the best performing cards for Golgari commanders.
