How to Evaluate New Cards for Constructed
September 28, 2009 | Posted by Dee
Josh Utter-Leyton on using the average case scenario for evaluating new cards instead of the best case or worst case scenarios:
Lotus Cobra is symptomatic of a flaw in how we think about Magic: we tend to be pretty bad at thinking in terms of average case. We do a good job of thinking about the best and worst case scenarios for cards, but the average case, the true value of cards, proves to be pretty elusive.
Take a look at what happened with Tarmogoyf. It’s not like we didn’t see the potential of a two mana 5/6 or better. It’s just that we also saw the potential of a two mana 0/1, and the worst case scenarios seemed so much more likely. It took quite some time, and presumably a fair amount of play with the card, for us to catch on to how good Tarmogoyf was on average.
It is completely understandable that we are bad at thinking average case. It is easy to imagine the best possible scenarios for a card, as well as the worst. It’s easy to see that Lotus Cobra could possibly fuel turn three Ultimatums, and it is also easy to see that at its worst Lotus Cobra will be a vanilla 2/1 for two. It’s also easy to see that neither of these cases is especially realistic. Honing in on what exactly is realistic – that’s more difficult. We can’t just think of one scenario that will demonstrate the average value of a card like we can for the best case and worst case.
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