Sometimes I have random questions about Magic, like "What color has the most Gods?", "How many monoblack Spiders are there?", or "What's the most common power among creatures?"
If you think those sound boring, that's okay! No need to read further. Otherwise, come join me as I occasionally post random statistical facts about Magic cards.
At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
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I would've pegged white as the color of gods. Black maybe as 2nd, but not black in first and white tied for last. The lack of monoblack spiders is somewhat of a surprise too. I'm sure they'll print a blue spider at one point. They're the patient engineers of the arthropods after all.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
I'm starting to realize that there are certain stats I'm curious about that I just can't get easily from Scryfall searches. Plotting something by year, for example, would take a lot of manual effort with my current tools. I bet with the right database and scripting I could get some interesting results.
I would've pegged white as the color of gods. Black maybe as 2nd, but not black in first and white tied for last. The lack of monoblack spiders is somewhat of a surprise too. I'm sure they'll print a blue spider at one point. They're the patient engineers of the arthropods after all.
Pretty much every god has been printed as part of a complete cycle, the exceptions being Klothys, the buy-a-box Athreos, and the three grixis ones in Hour of Devastation. Kaldheim is the only set so far to treat God more like a conventional creature type, but even there it doesn't show up at lower rarities.
Wurms! First appearing in Alpha with Craw Wurm, and most recently showing up in Kaldheim with Ravenous Lindwurm, these limbless monstrosities have been a staple in green for decades. But just how green are they?
That's more spread out than I expected! Wurms have always been mostly green, but back in the day, we got several interesting exceptions. I'm looking at you, Water Wurm.
What about rarity?
Wurms per Rarity C: 33 U: 36 R: 26 M: 9
Despite not being green's one true iconic creature type, wurms have a good spread across rarities! Showing up pretty equally if we combine rare and mythic. Just for fun, let's see how this compares to hydras.
Hydras per Rarity C: 1 U: 7 R: 37 M: 16
Okay, hydras do get a little more time in the spotlight, but I'm still pretty impressed with how many high-rarity wurms we get, given how often they appear at lower rarities as well. Good job, wurms!
Bonus question: How big are wurms?
Wurms by Mana Value (CMC) 0: 1 1: 1 2: 4 3: 3 4: 12 5: 22 6: 21 7: 21 8: 5 10: 1 11: 1 15: 1
Wurms feel most comfortable in the 5-7 mana range. The legacy of Craw Wurm lives on!
Speaking of Craw Wurm, 14 wurms are vanilla. Meanwhile, 25 wurms have trample, 1 has vigilance, and none have flying. The most expensive wurm in Magic is Wurmcoil Engine, both by cheapest printing (2XM, $15.72) and most expensive printing (Kaladesh Invention, $136.81). Some of my personal favorite wurms include Enlisted Wurm, Havenwood Wurm, and Pelakka Wurm. Also, I have no idea what Johtull Wurm is, but it scares me.
Johtull Wurms is, in fact, a Fungusaur. For my money I think Wurms are way more iconic than hydra, not just in a representative color sense, but also to magic itself. When I think of magic, there are several Wurms that come to mind, but of them the ice age printing of scaled wurm is what rises to the top.
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At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
I have one unanswered question from my first post. What's the most common power among creatures?
In a pretty stunning lead, 2 takes it. That makes sense, given how many 2/1's there are, but I'm surprised at how much lower second place is.
Now, will toughness match up with my 2/1 theory?
Huh, nope. 2 is still the leader, although by a much smaller margin this time.
Okay, let's take this in a different direction. What's the most common power among creatures?
Did you know that all three -1 power creatures were uncommon? I didn't! 2 is still the most "common" power, though. No big surprise there. In fact, 2 is the most popular power in any rarity... except mythic. Let's drill down into mythic specifically.
As you might expect, mythic creatures are, on average, bigger. Their bell curve is centered around 4, rather than the usual 2.
I was gonna stop here, but I had to do one more.
Some of this is expected. White heavily favors 2. Green has a wider spread (still peaking at 2). Only one color bucks the trend of loving 2-power creatures, and it's blue! With 496 1-power creatures and 489 2-power ones, blue shows a minor, but very unusual preference for 1-power creatures! Way to look out for the little guy, blue!
Can we see a p/t qnd rarity breakdown of red, looks like they are reslly close in 1 and 2 power creatures. Also curious about how their toughness looks since they arr often agressive. Black could be interesting there as well
Here's power by color as a line graph, for better comparison between each color.
Most colors have about the same shape, but we can see blue's slight preference for 1-power creatures here. We can also see that... - White has a ton of small creature cards, but drops off faster than the other colors as power increases. - Colorless creatures have a much flatter curve, being more evenly spread out across the range. - Red, green, and black look remarkably similar to each other, at least at this scale.
And here's toughness for all the colors.
Well this is interesting. - Blue still prefers 1 over 2. - Red still prefers 2, but it does have a lot of 1-toughness creatures. - Black now has a preference for 1, having significantly more 1-toughness creatures than any other color. - Colorless has a weird bimodal curve, with 2 actually dipping below 1 and 3! - Here we can more clearly see how green stays above all the other colors at higher toughness values.
And here's a bonus chart for red creatures by power and rarity, since you asked for it.
You know what? Let's throw in a line chart for rarity in general. I like these.
It's kinda interesting how there aren't really more big uncommons than big commons, but rare cards dominate the big creature space. (Mythics are on average large, but there just aren't enough mythics in general to compete with rares.)
Would it be possible to do a bar graph of the signed average difference between power and toughness for every creature of each color (including multicolored and colorless)? Kinda want to see which colors favor a higher toughness over a higher power and vice versa
Would it be possible to do a bar graph of the signed average difference between power and toughness for every creature of each color (including multicolored and colorless)? Kinda want to see which colors favor a higher toughness over a higher power and vice versa
That's an interesting question! I can't feasibly answer it with my current method of manual scryfall queries, but if I can find a way to automate my queries, this question would be a good way to test it.
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That will be an interesting challenge. If you want something simpler to do in the meantime you could draw some Sliver statistics? I wonder how they are spread across colors and numbers.
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Cecil Gershwin Palmer (Welcome to Night Vale) wrote:
Slivers! Probably the most mechanically-specific creature type in Magic, they have all sorts of patterns within them. Of course, they're known for sharing abilities, but did you also know every sliver has square stats? In all 109 slivers, there isn't a single one whose printed power and toughness aren't equal. This is an intentional design choice to make the math easier when they start getting buffed in various ways!
Now let's talk about colors. Slivers are known for appearing in all colors, but various sets have concentrated them in certain colors to create a more consistent archetype. My intuition is that slivers are mostly Naya, but let's find out.
Slivers in Each Color : 3 : 32 : 25 : 25 : 33 : 28
That's a pretty even spread! But the trophy goes to red! White is right behind, with green somewhere in the middle, and blue and black tied for last. Well, not counting the pitiful show by colorless, but no one likes those slivers anyway. Sorry, fake slivers.
Here we can really see how much slivers have been cycled across colors. Actually, let's take a walk through history and see how slivers were handled in each appearance.
Tempest: 2 in each color, 1 colorless Stronghold: 1 in each allied pair, 1 WUBRG Legion: 3 in each color Scourge: 1 WUBRG Time Spiral: 4 in each color, 1 in each allied pair, 1 colorless Planar Chaos: 1 in each color, 1 in each enemy pair, plus Sinew Sliver Future Sight: 1 in each color, 1 WUBRG Magic 2014: 1 rare in each color, plus 2 in white, 3 in red, 3 in green, and 1 colorless Magic 2015: 1 in each color, 1 WUBRG Modern Horizons: 1 uncommon in each color, plus 3 in white, 3 in red, 2 RW, and 1 WUBRG
So color distribution was another very strict pattern with slivers until Planar Chaos threw a slight curveball with the colorshifted Sinew Sliver. M14 then decided to push slivers more towards Naya, while still giving every color something. And Modern Horizons took a similar approach, but leaned more into white and red specifically.
If you'd like to see the history for yourself, just scroll through this scryfall search. It's pretty neat!
Bonus question: If you had one of every sliver on the battlefield at once, how big would Metallic Sliver be? I'll let you guess in your head first.
That's a big sliver! To be fair, most of that comes from Sliver Legion giving +108/+108, but the others pitched in, too. It would also have lots of abilities, many of which would be useless because of defender. Whoops!
So that's slivers! I'll be back eventually with more stats, but until then, may your opponents' hands be board-wipe free.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
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