Magic Numbers

This time we look at the new limited format of the Streets of New Capenna. Which color combinations are the most successful? Which color combinations are the most open? How to build a good mana base for the 3 color decks popular in the format? Which cards are the format all stars, and which ones over-perform in a particular color combination. All answered by exploring the data from ~23 000 drafts and nearly 150k games.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz5SQXIZoFE

Find all things Sierkovitz: https://linktr.ee/sierkovitz

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This week we preview the Streets of New Capenna. Traditionally before each set release we meet at SLKerstens twitch channel to discuss the format in our pre-release set review. But instead of looking at each card, we build our versions of each deck, based on pure theory crafting. This time SLKerstens, JasonILTG, Tajoordan and me talk about our hopes and expectations o the new set, cards to watch, cards that may fly under the radar for the first weeks, etc. The episode is also available on youtube and the slides can be accessed.

See the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10C-DIgOxZzm6gqw7ygduUuFDfuyv-LBFz3aG3yCg_qU/edit

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CQA3_K3OjM

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This week I look at the advantage of being on the play. Why do we win more when on the play, why starting gives you the advantage in later game and how does this advantage look like depending on the game length. Choosing to be on the play is a good heuristic, but I also look at when would it be theoretically good to choose to go second. And try to use 17Lands data to find decks that would, at least in theory, be better off going second. What types of cards are leading to those types of deck? What is the density of those types of cards that would prompt you to go second? In the end I show a simple model that lets you decide exactly that. Still in majority of cases you should chose to go first, but roughly 13% of decks are at least as good on the draw as on the play. In Best-of-3 this means you can get an extra edge as your opponent would typically choose to be on the play. This means you will always end up starting the game in a privileged position. I also look at the specific analysis of Azusa's Many Journeys, the card that inspired me to do this analysis.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fImR8FDq7BQ

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This week I have a special guest, Alex Nikolic, AKA Chord_o_Calls. A streamer, podcaster, great limited player and, imho the best card evaluator in the game. I got all his 17Lands data, analysed them and this episode is a great reveal. I show Alex what I learned from his data, we compare self-perception to numbers, and explore the uncharted world of personal M:tG data. We look at the totality of limited data range, from color preferences before the draft starts, through 1st pick preferences, pick orders, deck staples and cards never played, up to mulliganning trends and individual card personal win rates of Alex. I had a blast and Alex was on fire, which makes for a great episode, something I will rarely say about my own creations. If you are interested in potential of personal data - this is what you were looking for.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxEhRoefHXg

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This episode I am talking about the effect a copy number of a card has on its win rate. All based on 17Lands data for Kamigawa Neon Dynasty. Which cards are best as one-offs, which ones you want as many as you can and everything in between. But the episode is not only NEO-specific. I am trying to see which types of cards (e.g combat tricks, graveyard recursion) fall predominantly to a certain category, so that in future sets you can try and apply those findings directly, before enough data is collected. On top of that I looked at all the data related to Okiba Salvage - my pet bad card of the set.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww_6Z466lfw

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This episode is all about the ecology of the deck and Archetypist: a tool developed by Pekka Pulli and me that lets you visualise deck similarity and a localised win rate of similar decks. This allows to show clusters of particularly successful builds for each archetype. I look at clusters of each each archetype and try to figure out what makes those decks tick, what is missing from the less successful builds, etc. You can explore the data yourself at https://archetypist.netlify.app/ using a simple set of parameters you can manipulate.

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

Today I will be looking at differences between how late you will see cards in Pack 1 and Pack 3 of the draft. We will look at the 17Lands ALSA measure to find those differences. What is ALSA you might ask? Well I will describe it in detail and even visualize it. Looking at differences between P1 and P3 may seem unnecessarily deep, but there are big differences between how we draft pack 1 and pack 3 and knowing how it works could give you a nice edge. Which cards are almost ungettable in P1 but will travel further in P3? Which cards are relatively easy to get in P1 but get trickier to get in P3? I also look at the impact of playing your first pick. Do you get a boost from playing it or not? Spoiler: the boost is tiny, which means that all the advantages of sticking to your first pick are eaten by the drawbacks of forcing the 1st pick when you should pivot. I will also look at the anatomy of draft decks. Do trophy decks differ from others in terms of playing the first picks? Maybe they play more later picks? Well, only one way to find out.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MVvuwXsNz6I

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

Today I look at the early evolution of the Kamigawa draft format. How did Arena users' evaluations change over the first two weeks? What does it mean to your drafting? I also try a new method of quantifying if a deck is aggro, midrange or controlling and look at the colour combinations from that perspective to see what do they "want" to achieve. And I shed some light on the Neon Dynasty worst-kept secret. Look at that clickbait. Ok, it is about the numbers behind Kami of Terrible Secrets, I can't bait.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqjTgIhPYnc

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This week I look at the differences between NEO Draft and Sealed - which cards do differently, which cards to consider more carefully while building your pool. Apart from that, I look at the Artifact-Enchantment spectrum within the format. What are the optimal numbers of those two types in your deck, are there any trends in relation to the number of cards of those types you play? Based on that I also look at some of the interesting cards in Kamigawa and try to provide numbers that will help you decide whether you should play them or not.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeOO8Lb8ukU

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

Today we look into the early data from Kamigawa BO1 drafts. I try to explain how Ninjas can sneakily influence win rates of other cards and how to see just how naughty they have been with the data (spoiler: the effect is not that big but can lead you to thinking some cards are a bit better than they really are). I also look at which color pairs are open and speculate a bit on which colors can improve in the future. I also talk about each color pair, their MVPs and cards that have surprisingly high win rates. As always, all the data is courtesy of 17Lands.com

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeVw5PSGO84

You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie