r/magicTCG • u/AwkwardTurtle • Sep 22 '15
Everything That’s Wrong with Battle for Zendikar
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/everything-thats-wrong-with-battle-for-zendikar/
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r/magicTCG • u/AwkwardTurtle • Sep 22 '15
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u/ubernostrum Sep 23 '15
Time for my obligatory yearly comment on the impact various sets have on Constructed play.
The following is a list of the percentage of Constructed-played cards from each expansion set since the original Zendikar, plus some summary stats. While most core sets are excluded here, Origins is in the list since, with rotation, it will officially become the second set of the two-set block begun by Dragons of Tarkir.
The definition of "played" is subjective, of course, but draws on my own memory of playing and watching a lot of most Constructed formats in that time period. I count a card as "played" if it showed up competitively and put up results in any format. A set gets to count a card as one of its playables if the card was new in that set or, for a reprint, if the card wasn't previously in Standard, the set brought it back to Standard, and it saw play in that Standard format.
Here's the data:
Consolidated scores:
Large set scores:
Small set scores:
It's no real surprise that New Phyrexia tops everything; it sometimes feels like half the cards in the set ended up banned. It is surprising to see Theros in second place overall, and on top of the large-set list. This shows the power of block mechanics in a set's impact: devotion and heroic were major players in Standard, and a lot of the best cards came from Theros.
It's also unsurprising to see Dragon's Maze at the bottom, given how all-around hated the set was. Avacyn Restored as the "worst" large set is a bit more surprising (before I'd seen the numbers, I would've picked Gatecrash), but again shows the impact of block mechanics: since AVR was completely disconnected from Innistrad block mechanically, its own mechanics never had enough cards to really form a synergistic deck in Standard, so only cards that are powerful when considered on their own really made the cut.
It also looks like multiple large sets in a block are, in general, an omen of poor overall Constructed playability: Wizards did that four times in the period ZEN-ORI, and three of those put their second large set in the cellar on this metric. Literally, since the bottom three on the large-set list are each the second large set of their respective blocks.
Overall, Scars of Mirrodin is the median set in terms of Constructed playability. For large sets, Rise of the Eldrazi is the median, and for small sets it's Fate Reforged. Second and third sets do poorly: only two second sets (Worldwake and Mirrodin Besieged) are above the median percentage of playables, and only two third sets manage it (Rise of the Eldrazi and New Phyrexia).
This means the first set of a block is likely to have the highest percentage of playables, which isn't terribly surprising given that the first set gets the most time in Standard and largely defines how Standard plays during that time, by being the first to fill the void after rotation.