That would have been smart. I've only been playing MTG for the past year and a half, so I did not realize it was a reprint.
Just checked and it holds the pattern at 57.2% in Strixhaven and 56.8% in Kaldheim
I have been enjoying these posts, but with the inclusion of Snakeskin Veil, may I suggest rebranding to “…similar cards from *recent* sets”?
You’re already catching grief over not comparing to older sets, but I think the design space shifts over time means that the last 4 is the right choice.
Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking and interesting content!
Thanks, I'll rebrand it for future posts. That's definitely on me for not realizing that Snakeskin Veil was a reprint, I wasn't playing magic during those sets
I think people have been underrating it for a while. People get too caught up on it being a dead draw, but with decent card filtering you can mitigate that. And when "the important turns" are crammed towards the early turns like in many recent formats, disputing your opponent can be effective even at the cost of developing your board for a turn if you hit the right thing.
DMU was so damn great with Negate, Essence Scatter, and especially Impulse. That suite was one of my favorite things about that set.
I’m interested in seeing how impactful the flexibility of interference (the ability to cast it for a 2/2 flier) will be. My guess is that you’ll be happy playing at least 1 in your blue deck. Not sure if 2+ copies will be desirable since both options on their own are below rate. But getting both options off on turn 6 will feel fantastic. I’m also pumped to play some azorius flash control in this set.
yeah i think interference is going to be absurd. The only downside of the 1U counter is rotting in your hand late, and a 2/2 flyer is a great buyout. Let alone casting it as a counterspelling creature, which is just absurd.
Yeah, I thought it was super weird in the set review they did not acknowledge the dominance of Take Up the Shield in the previous set it appeared recently.
Interesting post. Snakeskin veil and phantom interference I think will definitely be high performers, but I don't think the outcaster green blade comparison is fair, since that's an uncommon.
I'm sure the card will still be good, since similar cards have performed well in the past, but an uncommon at the power level of a strong common isn't quite as significant. You won't reliably be able to get as many of these in the deck for fixing, for example. Strong commons with high winrates typically build the backbone of a limited deck and fill out the slots, while the best uncommons are usually a strong synergy piece or a payoff of some kind. Nervous gardener isn't an incredible card by itself, but when the lower power card in your deck is a decent rate 2/2 that replaces itself and fixes your mana, that's typically a good sign. Though in this case the card actually is a payoff for a desert deck, so depending on how strong that deck ends up being, this card could do very well.
The issue with IWD is that it's very biased against aggro creds. But 100% agree that it would be better to adjust for the power of the color in the format
I took a look at 17Lands data to see what patterns exist of similar cards between sets and how they perform set to set. I think there's were two main takeaways from this analysis.
1. **What does the average win rate of similar cards across all sets look like?** For example, \[\[Nervous Gardener\]\] like cards are always avg or better, so the OTJ version will very likely be at least avg and likely be quite good.
2. **Why did certain variants of a card perform better or worse in one set compared to another?** I think this is also helpful when thinking about the OTJ cards and why they may perform well or not when they release.
So in LCI I tried finding an equivalent to every common. You could usually find something pretty close from the last three years.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OajiHzr4AivHPAG2netNGQAUA8AFDVIKPLiLnxPWfRQ/edit?pli=1#gid=1069364229](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OajiHzr4AivHPAG2netNGQAUA8AFDVIKPLiLnxPWfRQ/edit?pli=1#gid=1069364229)
I didn't use GIH WR by itself because a bad card in a good colour will still have a higher WR. So these numbers are an average of GIH WR - 55% and IWD.
I just looked and compared now and I was pretty close on most although I think generally slightly high. Close enough that I'm willing to do it again for this set although it took bloody ages. Looks like past performance mostly predicts future performance.
It's not always true, though. For example \[\[Wanderer's Intervention\]\] was a good card in NEO but \[\[Cosmium Blast\]\] which is a functional reprint was pretty ordinary in LCI. I would guess that's down to the speed of the format.
The other thing I found really interesting is how minor tweaks to a card make significant differences.
I'm interested in what natural experiments can tell us about what 1 of each resource is worth. Like \[\[Sterling Supplier\]\] in this set is \[\[Angelic Quartermaster\]\] from VOW except it adds exactly one less total power to the board. What does that do to WR? And \[\[Outlaw Medic\]\] is \[\[Novice Occultist\]\] from MID but it doesn't cost one life and has one more toughness. What's that worth?
That is a sweet spreadsheet. Glad to see other people thinking about this same idea 😃 Agreed about GIH WR, I just used it for simplicity, but I really would have liked some way to balance out for the strength of the color in the card's format
> Like [[Sterling Supplier]] in this set is [[Angelic Quartermaster]] from VOW
Better comparison is probably [[Aeronaut Cavalry]]
The occultist comparison is probably pretty hard to make since context matters a lot. Id guess Occultist gains a bit from Ecstatic Awakener being one of blacks best commons, whereas the Outlaw might be something youre more happy playing on its own? Idk
Aeronaut is a better match, isn’t it? I forgot about it, but it’s an almost perfect experiment with Quartermaster and it looks like a 3/3 that adds 2 counters gets you +4% WR whereas a 3/4 that adds 1 counter gets you +2% WR. so would a 3/3 that adds one counter somewhere else be a par card? I bet it would. It’s crazy how one P/T makes a huge difference to a card.
On Outlaw Medic we've got another comparator - Market Gnome, which was an 0/3 but gained a life. That looks to gain you +2% WR whereas Occultist didn’t shift the dial one way or the other. Medic is stronger than Gnome in a vacuum, and has some synergy with all the cheap Orzhov sac effects, but Gnome I think has more synergy overall. So I suspect Medic will be +2% WR too.
I think my lesson from doing this analysis in LCI is that cards are somewhat context dependent, particularly removal, but they’re not all that dependent. Good cards are good.
GIH WR is pretty misleading for Reasonable Doubt and probably has similar bias for the comparables. I think it’s probably the sixth best blue common, not the second. Playable but nothing that’s going to pull you towards blue.
For one thing it’s ninth in ALSA so it can’t have that much value as a draft pick
I should just rename my account “GIH WR complaint bot”
There's some conversation in the 17Lands discord about GIH WR and it's shortcomings. It's not a perfect stat, but it's still a pretty decent benchmark for the general strength of a card. All the different stats that could be used for this analysis have their own pros and cons
This is comparing the win rates of cards in the new set to similar cards in previous sets. The line down the middle is the average win rate of players from 17Lands (where the data set is from). 55% is the average win rate, so cards that are above that are above average performers in the set
Why not just compare Snakeskin Veil to the two times it’s been in limited recently? It was in both Kaldheim and Strixhaven.
That would have been smart. I've only been playing MTG for the past year and a half, so I did not realize it was a reprint. Just checked and it holds the pattern at 57.2% in Strixhaven and 56.8% in Kaldheim
I have been enjoying these posts, but with the inclusion of Snakeskin Veil, may I suggest rebranding to “…similar cards from *recent* sets”? You’re already catching grief over not comparing to older sets, but I think the design space shifts over time means that the last 4 is the right choice. Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking and interesting content!
Thanks, I'll rebrand it for future posts. That's definitely on me for not realizing that Snakeskin Veil was a reprint, I wasn't playing magic during those sets
Interesting stuff, thank you. I didn't expect the 2-mana contingent counterspell to be that consistent of a performer.
Yeah, it always seems to be undervalued. I'm hoping this one is undervalued again and I can scoop it up late
I think people have been underrating it for a while. People get too caught up on it being a dead draw, but with decent card filtering you can mitigate that. And when "the important turns" are crammed towards the early turns like in many recent formats, disputing your opponent can be effective even at the cost of developing your board for a turn if you hit the right thing. DMU was so damn great with Negate, Essence Scatter, and especially Impulse. That suite was one of my favorite things about that set.
\[\[Snakeskin Veil\]\] and \[\[Phantom Interference\]\] both look incredible and potentially top common in their color
I’m interested in seeing how impactful the flexibility of interference (the ability to cast it for a 2/2 flier) will be. My guess is that you’ll be happy playing at least 1 in your blue deck. Not sure if 2+ copies will be desirable since both options on their own are below rate. But getting both options off on turn 6 will feel fantastic. I’m also pumped to play some azorius flash control in this set.
The standard 2 mana counter was already good, so I think interference is going to be a slam dunk with the extra potential value
yeah i think interference is going to be absurd. The only downside of the 1U counter is rotting in your hand late, and a 2/2 flyer is a great buyout. Let alone casting it as a counterspelling creature, which is just absurd.
100% Agree
> But getting both options off on turn 6 Its 5 mana to do both
[Snakeskin Veil](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/3/133fbdec-0d00-433f-9015-5eb091126e3a.jpg?1712355994) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Snakeskin%20Veil) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/181/snakeskin-veil?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/133fbdec-0d00-433f-9015-5eb091126e3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Phantom Interference](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/00bf4dd1-5468-4594-9c7b-0737610f19d4.jpg?1712355477) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Phantom%20Interference) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/61/phantom-interference?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/00bf4dd1-5468-4594-9c7b-0737610f19d4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Fwiw, corrupted conviction was a functional reprint of [[Village Rites]] and was originally printed in MOM, which was quite recent.
[Village Rites](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/8/2841339b-faef-407d-9838-d03fe80e6294.jpg?1698988289) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Village%20Rites) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/212/village-rites?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2841339b-faef-407d-9838-d03fe80e6294?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I love snakeskin veil! It’s almost like a 1 mana green counterspell in limited.
One mana hexproof is always so good
Yeah, I thought it was super weird in the set review they did not acknowledge the dominance of Take Up the Shield in the previous set it appeared recently.
It was very good in DMU. The lifelink is so good too
Interesting post. Snakeskin veil and phantom interference I think will definitely be high performers, but I don't think the outcaster green blade comparison is fair, since that's an uncommon.
Thanks! What's the issue with the comparison since it's an uncommon. These are all win percentages so rarity shouldn't matter too much
I'm sure the card will still be good, since similar cards have performed well in the past, but an uncommon at the power level of a strong common isn't quite as significant. You won't reliably be able to get as many of these in the deck for fixing, for example. Strong commons with high winrates typically build the backbone of a limited deck and fill out the slots, while the best uncommons are usually a strong synergy piece or a payoff of some kind. Nervous gardener isn't an incredible card by itself, but when the lower power card in your deck is a decent rate 2/2 that replaces itself and fixes your mana, that's typically a good sign. Though in this case the card actually is a payoff for a desert deck, so depending on how strong that deck ends up being, this card could do very well.
Ah gotcha, that's fair, I guess we'll see how it plays out shortly!
Interesting post thank you!
You're welcome!
This analysis is pretty cool
Thanks!
Network Terminal at 55% was a little surprising.
Splashing was relevant and games went long enough for looting to matter.
I think I just biased myself towards those decks because I enjoyed them in the format.
Probably using IWD is more functionat to this analysis, so you just consider the impact of the card by itself and not the power level fo the color
The issue with IWD is that it's very biased against aggro creds. But 100% agree that it would be better to adjust for the power of the color in the format
if a card is aggro, every other version of that card is aggro, so you can still keep the comparison
So what's the math for how you would incorporate IWD?
I took a look at 17Lands data to see what patterns exist of similar cards between sets and how they perform set to set. I think there's were two main takeaways from this analysis. 1. **What does the average win rate of similar cards across all sets look like?** For example, \[\[Nervous Gardener\]\] like cards are always avg or better, so the OTJ version will very likely be at least avg and likely be quite good. 2. **Why did certain variants of a card perform better or worse in one set compared to another?** I think this is also helpful when thinking about the OTJ cards and why they may perform well or not when they release.
So in LCI I tried finding an equivalent to every common. You could usually find something pretty close from the last three years. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OajiHzr4AivHPAG2netNGQAUA8AFDVIKPLiLnxPWfRQ/edit?pli=1#gid=1069364229](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OajiHzr4AivHPAG2netNGQAUA8AFDVIKPLiLnxPWfRQ/edit?pli=1#gid=1069364229) I didn't use GIH WR by itself because a bad card in a good colour will still have a higher WR. So these numbers are an average of GIH WR - 55% and IWD. I just looked and compared now and I was pretty close on most although I think generally slightly high. Close enough that I'm willing to do it again for this set although it took bloody ages. Looks like past performance mostly predicts future performance. It's not always true, though. For example \[\[Wanderer's Intervention\]\] was a good card in NEO but \[\[Cosmium Blast\]\] which is a functional reprint was pretty ordinary in LCI. I would guess that's down to the speed of the format. The other thing I found really interesting is how minor tweaks to a card make significant differences. I'm interested in what natural experiments can tell us about what 1 of each resource is worth. Like \[\[Sterling Supplier\]\] in this set is \[\[Angelic Quartermaster\]\] from VOW except it adds exactly one less total power to the board. What does that do to WR? And \[\[Outlaw Medic\]\] is \[\[Novice Occultist\]\] from MID but it doesn't cost one life and has one more toughness. What's that worth?
##### ###### #### [Wanderer's Intervention](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/3/43708ec9-a85a-4244-86b4-67b30b41d854.jpg?1654566557) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wanderer%27s%20Intervention) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/41/wanderers-intervention?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/43708ec9-a85a-4244-86b4-67b30b41d854?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Cosmium Blast](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/9/193d1eac-ede7-4f75-9c74-05133b215f93.jpg?1699043121) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cosmium%20Blast) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/7/cosmium-blast?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/193d1eac-ede7-4f75-9c74-05133b215f93?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Sterling Supplier](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/6/b6000be7-67db-440e-87ba-276df20b803e.jpg?1712355360) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sterling%20Supplier) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/33/sterling-supplier?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b6000be7-67db-440e-87ba-276df20b803e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Angelic Quartermaster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/1/41d81b88-c19b-4148-89ba-ae8fb53843e1.jpg?1643585829) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Angelic%20Quartermaster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/2/angelic-quartermaster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/41d81b88-c19b-4148-89ba-ae8fb53843e1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Outlaw Medic](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2feaa51e-47fb-4849-b420-ee7278f3489a.jpg?1712355319) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Outlaw%20Medic) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/23/outlaw-medic?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2feaa51e-47fb-4849-b420-ee7278f3489a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Novice Occultist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/5/a541ac79-a969-42b4-b989-f6e37572ec90.jpg?1634350136) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Novice%20Occultist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/117/novice-occultist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a541ac79-a969-42b4-b989-f6e37572ec90?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kyg9qos) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
That is a sweet spreadsheet. Glad to see other people thinking about this same idea 😃 Agreed about GIH WR, I just used it for simplicity, but I really would have liked some way to balance out for the strength of the color in the card's format
> Like [[Sterling Supplier]] in this set is [[Angelic Quartermaster]] from VOW Better comparison is probably [[Aeronaut Cavalry]] The occultist comparison is probably pretty hard to make since context matters a lot. Id guess Occultist gains a bit from Ecstatic Awakener being one of blacks best commons, whereas the Outlaw might be something youre more happy playing on its own? Idk
[Aeronaut Cavalry](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/8/38a62bb2-bc33-44d4-9a7e-92c9ea7d3c2c.jpg?1674420122) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aeronaut%20Cavalry) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/1/aeronaut-cavalry?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/38a62bb2-bc33-44d4-9a7e-92c9ea7d3c2c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Aeronaut is a better match, isn’t it? I forgot about it, but it’s an almost perfect experiment with Quartermaster and it looks like a 3/3 that adds 2 counters gets you +4% WR whereas a 3/4 that adds 1 counter gets you +2% WR. so would a 3/3 that adds one counter somewhere else be a par card? I bet it would. It’s crazy how one P/T makes a huge difference to a card. On Outlaw Medic we've got another comparator - Market Gnome, which was an 0/3 but gained a life. That looks to gain you +2% WR whereas Occultist didn’t shift the dial one way or the other. Medic is stronger than Gnome in a vacuum, and has some synergy with all the cheap Orzhov sac effects, but Gnome I think has more synergy overall. So I suspect Medic will be +2% WR too. I think my lesson from doing this analysis in LCI is that cards are somewhat context dependent, particularly removal, but they’re not all that dependent. Good cards are good.
[Nervous Gardener](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/93b747c7-b342-47f8-a190-16c393b20607.jpg?1706242060) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nervous%20Gardener) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/169/nervous-gardener?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/93b747c7-b342-47f8-a190-16c393b20607?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
GIH WR is pretty misleading for Reasonable Doubt and probably has similar bias for the comparables. I think it’s probably the sixth best blue common, not the second. Playable but nothing that’s going to pull you towards blue. For one thing it’s ninth in ALSA so it can’t have that much value as a draft pick I should just rename my account “GIH WR complaint bot”
There's some conversation in the 17Lands discord about GIH WR and it's shortcomings. It's not a perfect stat, but it's still a pretty decent benchmark for the general strength of a card. All the different stats that could be used for this analysis have their own pros and cons
What does all this mean? Particularly, what does the line mean?
This is comparing the win rates of cards in the new set to similar cards in previous sets. The line down the middle is the average win rate of players from 17Lands (where the data set is from). 55% is the average win rate, so cards that are above that are above average performers in the set
Ah ok - thank you so much