Hello berryjon,I just started reading your articles, and I found them incredible, and I wanted to ask when are you going to do an article about Leviathan and the succesors as you said in pattern recognition n19. I started around the first innistrad and got to admit this property of the blue color is quite interesting. Also how it combined with green to make the planeswlker kiora and how it made Sky Swallower transform into Simic Sky Swallower, apart from the old creatures maybe the difference in sustainability like Denizen of the Deep vs Inkwell Leviathan as they seem to be divided in two, those who "harm" you and those who seem normal. Maybe talk also about those that work better with islands only like Scourge of Fleets their combination with cards like Whelming Wave, Quest for Ula's Temple and Artful Dodge and finally a their evolution around magic years and maybe, make a deck?

berryjon should definitely do an article about Rarity. The pony.

What? I'd read it.

Rose: I haven't played enough of the My Little Pony CCG to be able to tell you how good or bad the various versions of Rarity are.

I had no idea that Mythics were based in an earlier failure of WOTC. Thinks for the information!

I remember being infuriated at the announcement of Mythic Rare. The whole thing seemed like a cheap cash grab. I remember being completely baffled at how accepting and even excited other players were for Mythics. How could they not see that they were being ripped off!?

I'm over it, obviously. But I was positively livid at the time. The only thing that kept me playing was how awesome Alara block was otherwise. Alara Reborn is probably my favorite set of all time.

So I have the same chance of pulling a Gideon of the Trials as I do Gideon's Intervention? It just seems that mythics are rarer because there are less unique cards compared to rares?

As in, if hypothetical set A has 30 rares and 10 mythics, each card has an equal chance of appearing in a pack, but more 3 times more rares are opened because there are more unique cards. This makes the red set symbol mean nothing at all. is this correct?

No, you are still going to pull less Mythics than Rares.

Simply put, if you took a random pack of Amonkhet, and didn't open it, your pack would be approximately 3.5 times more likely to contain a Rare than a Mythic.

The not so simple way to put it is that because they share the same distributive rarity, i.e. they both can appear in the same slot in your pack - the rare, then they are both "Rare" cards. But because the "Rare" is 3.5 times more likely to appear, then it gets called the "R3", while the Mythic is the R1. You will still pull 3.5 rares per Mythic (on average).

Using the numbers for Amonkhet that you provided though, berryjon, there are slightly more than 3.5 times as many individual Rares as there are Mythics (15 vs 53). So if ~3.5 times as many packs contain a rare as those that contain a mythic, hypothetically if we were to open an arbitrarily large volume of packs, say, 1,000,000, we should end up with about the same number of Gideon of the Trials as we do Gideon's Intervention, no?

In any given arbitrarily large sampling, you will have ~3.5 times as many copies of any given "Rare" card (the R3.5) as you will of any given "Mythic Rare" card (the R1).

If I were to open 1000 packs (to chop three zeros off your scenario), I would likely see...

(does some quick calculations)

I would likely see 222(.2~) Mythic rares, which would give me ~14.81 Gideon of the Trials. This would leave me with 777(.7~) Rares, of which I should expect to see ~14.675 copies of Gideon's Intervention.

However this is based on a sample size, that frankly, would require you to work for Star City Games or the like, as this example size required opening 27.7~ boxes of cards.

When I worked for my LGS (NOT my FLAGS), I would open 6-8 boxes of a set in prep for the release date. That's for a brick-and-mortar store, and not an online retailer.

So yes, given an arbitrary sample size, you will actually be more likely to pull more copies of a given Mythic Rare than you will of any given Rare. But you will still see ~3.5 more Rares in total.

This is, of course, Statistics. Reality may vary. I've opened boxes for my LGS, and gotten three of the same mythic, and none of a given Rare.

Thanks for all that. I was really more interested in the implications in regards to overall supply and circulation. This would mean that, demand aside, there should be vaguely the same number of copies of Gideon of the Trials in overall circulation and use as there are Gideon's Intervention. That's actually a good thing imo.

Great article. Learned a great deal. Keep up the awesome writing.

Ah yes, uncommon 3's instead of rares. now I feel old ;)

I remember buying a lot of 4th edition, and not pulling any Blood Lust infact I only found out the card existed a year later (I played mostly blue/black then). Now I understand why : ) thanks :)

Speaking of which, Blood Lust at the time was an amazing card: it raised power and lowered toughness of a target (!) creature...it was an answer to Giant Growth of sorts. Perhaps it warrants an article in due time? :)

So does this kind of statistics stuff also determine sometimes what the rarity of a card is or will be? My example card of confusion being Nephalia Moondrakes.

I still can't understand why this was not printed at uncommon rarity. It doesn't seem like it deserved it, or, more importantly, I feel like no draft player deserves opening this for their rare when compared to the other options within the same set as it.

As a side note I feel like a huge nerd for understanding the statistics of the whole "U3, R1" thing. I've never even had a statistics class directly I've just been around people who have.

It's worth noting that some commons are more common than others. If I recall correctly, Ulamog's Crusher, Hand of Emrakul, and Wastes were all printed at a higher frequency than normal commons. For two of these cards, they wanted to increase the ASFAN of the whole "giant tentacle monster" theme, and the third was to make it easier for players to acquire 10-20 copies.

ibstudent2200: Wastes was in the Basic Land slot, and if you told me it was C3 compared to //// at C1, then I would totally believe you, and agree with Wizard's decision.

Do you have a source on the other two though?

TheRedGoat: I will give you the same answer that Wizards gives whenever someone complains about an underpowered card in a certain rarity (like, say, a Mythic Comet Storm):"So, you think card is so bad you want to see more of them in your packs?"

Wizards will sometimes up a card's rarity when they feel it belongs in a set, but shouldn't be a major part of it in any way. This is where Junk Rares and Junk Mythics come from.

... By my reckoning, every main point here is wrong.

1. The mythics actually have a different symbol on them. I wasn't around opening packs back when R3/C1 was a thing, but I'm not seeing how the uncommons would have actually been appearing in the rare slot in the pack. It would only have meant that the rarity symbol on a card didn't actually indicate its scarcity accurately.

2. These days, people who pulled a mythic probably did objectively get a good (financial) deal. Per MTGGoldfish, unless you pulled Cruel Reality, you got at least a $3 card in Combat Celebrant, which is neck-and-neck with the cycle lands. Only Harsh Mentor and Glorybringer are worth significantly more at the moment.

3. Rares are now printed twice on a sheet. (53 * 2) + 15 = 121. About 1 in 8 cards (15/121) in the rare slot are mythics. The 3.5 number comes from comparing the number of cards at each rarity level, but that's irrelevant to the comparison being made. By the old logic, rares would be "R2", not "R3.5".

4. More generally, the exact frequency of a given card depends not just on how many times it appears on a sheet and how many slots it has in a pack, but also on the number of cards printed at the same rarity.

5. I'm told that they actually went as high as R6 and U6 for some sets.

zahlman: Allow me address your points point by point:

1) I did not say that Uncommons appeared in the Rare slot. I did use a hypothetical example to show how the shifting rarities could cause a R3 to have the same odds of appearing as a U1, making it look like the player had pulled an additional Uncommon rather than a Rare in their hypothetical pack.

The symbol for Mythics are the same as any other card in the set. It's just that the color changes. This system was implemented after the backlash from the multiple rarities debacle, and has been the standard since. Early sets had no way to tell what what card appeared at what rarity, short of checking in with Wizards or through brute force math.

2) Who mentioned anything about money? No one has been talking about the financial gain for anything here as it is irrelevant to the discussion.

3) I will have to double check the numbers, and re-crunch math if that is true. But off the top of my head, if you are correct, then I was wrong in calling actual Rares R3.5's.

4) I am not talking about exact numbers, except as a response to the questions from the comments. Rather, I was describing a relative measure. If I need to redo the entire article from scratch, I will leave this one as-is to show my mistakes, and make a new one later with the right information.

5) Citation Needed.

I'm admittedly not wanting to see more of Nephalia Moondrakes, or similarly over-rarified cards (is that the right phrasing?) in my packs, but to me I would rather see the card's abilities/stats be more appropriate to its rarity. Like Since the moondrakes are rare give them a cheaper activation cost or something?

I guess my beef is with the idea of "junk rares and mythics". If something is going to end up being a dollar minimum price-wise just because of its rarity, then I'd rather the card not be totally unplayable outside of super casual games. But I doubt I'm the first or last to have this problem so I guess I just move on?

Not sure if this is the right thread for my argument at this point.

The system of coloring set symbols to correspond to rarity began in 1998. The first set to have the colored set symbols was Exodus, and the second one was Unglued. They kept it up with Urza's Saga and the rest was history. The following year, Sixth Edition would become the first core set to have set symbol at all. Before that core sets didn't have symbols and the symbols were explicitly referred to as "expansion symbols" because they indicated the expansion set.

berryjon With Wastes, I was basing that info on some stuff I heard during spoiler season, so that might be incorrect.

As far as the two Eldrazi, MaRo mentioned it in one of his podcasts (Drive to Work 135).

TheRedGoat I played almost no Shadows over Innistrad limited, but Nephalia Moondrakes looks like a Limited bomb to me. Sure, it sucks in Constructed, but that isn't why the card was printed. Compare it to the "Soul of" creatures in M15, and Moondrakes' effect is appropriately costed ( is apparently worth a 3/3).

Also, I suspect that the ETB originally gave all creatures you control flying, but was nerfed during development because it was too powerful in Limited.

Truthfully, if I had no other rare at all in a Shadows draft, yes I would probably put it in the deck IF I was playing something with blue in it. But to look even at the other cards available in the 2 sets, the effect itself is practically useless.

Spirit tribal would never need the ability. If you're running Izzet then you're slinging much cheaper to cast spells to win and shouldn't be spending that kind of mana on one spell. Simic and Dimir strategies within the set would likely use this spell only as fuel for other spells since it has use in the grave, but even then you still have the cost problem versus using that mana for other spells. And this is definitely not the spell to splash blue for within the Innistrad block. It is outclassed by most if not all of its competitors, hence why I dislike the card.

I mean, I'm even willing to throw Reap Intellect into a game of commander if I felt my meta needed that level of targeted hand hate, but Nephalia Moondrakes just cannot compete with anything.

Anyway, this is all a subject for a thread unto itself. "junk Rares" are bad, but until Wizard's design team stops making them we'll still have to deal with them every once in a while.

And yes if the spell gave all your stuff flying each time then that would be a bit more deserving of the cost, but it still wouldn't be that great to have outside of limited.

berryjon So In the case of a card like Fatal Push it is safe to say that it's appearance is not as frequent as a normal uncommon. Do you think it's on the Rare/Mythic Sheet?

Orzhov0413 I have not seen or heard of a case where Fatal Push is somehow less or more common than any other Uncommon. What is the source of your allegation?

And no, it wouldn't have been printed on the Rare Sheet.

berryjon The owner of my LGS (also a close friend) had me help with unboxing product since January. I would say we opened around 300 boxes and we opened 114 copies of Fatal Push Aether Revolt has 60 Uncommons assuming that all Uncommons are printed evenly at 3 per pack and 36 packs per box so (3*36)/60=1.8. So assuming each uncommon is printed evenly you should get 1.8 of each uncommon per box (excluding foils). At this rate, we should have had 540 copies of Fatal Push in the 300 boxes instead we got 114. So for our sample size, the Fatal push appearance rate was .38 fatal pushes per box. So by this math for every 1 uncommon you get .21 copies of Fatal Push. This is what led to me suspecting Fatal Push was on a rare/mythic sheet because my numbers don't add up. My sample size may have been a bit small (I'm not really sure) but the numbers dont seem right to me.

The difference between math and reality is a massive one. I mentioned cracking 6-8 boxes in-store to prep for a release date. I've gone through selections where I would pull multiple copies of a mythic, and no copies of a rare.

It happens. Not commonly, but it can and does.

what if Wizards introduced 2 new rarities...

Mythic Common.

Mythic Uncommon.

Discuss.

That's essentially what C1 and U1 were, as discussed in the article. C3s were 3 times as common as C1s, same with U3s and U1s.