Pattern Recognition #222 - As Fan

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

6 January 2022

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series as written by myself, berryjon. I am something of an Old Fogey who has been around the block quite a few times where Magic is concerned, as as such, I use this series to talk about the various aspects of this game, be it deck design, card construction, mechanics chat, in-universe characters and history. Or whatever happens to cross my mind this week. Please, feel free to dissent in the comments below the article, add suggestions or just plain correct me! I am a Smart Ass, so I can take it.

Welcome back from the holidays everyone! I hope they were more relaxing for you than they were for me.

But it's a new year! And a new article for you all! And I was going to make this one a video, but the gimmick didn't work out. You see, I was sitting on my box of Crimson Vow, and I was going to open it all for you while talking about today's subject and show off the cards I was opening at the same time to demonstrate what I was talking about

It's a gimmick that you really only get one shot at it, and I blew it. Sorry, folks. But hey, I can still talk about such things! At least this time, I won't be speaking off the cuff and will at least be able to pretend that I'm not writing by the seat of my pants again. Still. Again. One or the other!

Anyway, what is the As-Fan, and why does it keep showing up in comments from MaRo and Wizards about standard boosters? Well, it's a very simple concept, and one that's been built into the game since pretty much forever.

Actually, I'm not sure when it started, I think with Legends? Anyway, what was started was Wizards cheating. And cheating in a manner that no one objects to, and has worked out for the best for everyone involved since.

You see, Wizards is cheating with the colour distribution of the packs you are looking at. They are messing with the as fan of the boosters that cards come in with the purpose of making them more viable for play and more playable.

What do I mean?

Well, in a draft booster, the only kind of booster worth getting - that's my opinion and this is my soap box - you have 10 Commons, 3 Uncommons and a single Rare. The As Fan is the intended even distribution of colours, card types, and even mechanics in the set, distilled into a single card pack.

Let's break this down, shall we? And here is where I would have been waving a pack at the camera in my video, but trust me, that didn't work out. With the commons, we have ten. Which means that when you open a random pack, you'll get what should be, on average, 2 cards of each color at Common. Now, this isn't always the case, as there are colourless artifacts in play even at commons. What you actually get is 1-2 of each common and that odd one is replaced with an artifact.

Normally, as when I opened my first pack for the video, there were 3 cards at common, and an Artifact, but with only one and card in the commons slot. This is, contrary to what I just told you, normal.

Because Statistics. Because Wizards can't control every little thing, about their packs, but they can weigh things in one way or another. So the first thing that is done is to try and make each pack as even as possible at the commons. Which can and does happen, and when you crack open a full box, statistical outliers like that first pack of mine are handled by the rest of the packs that make up for it.

In fact, here's something for you to chew on. There are 121 Commons in a modern era set. 10 Commons per pack, and I'm not counting foils here, and 36 packs in a box. That means that if your box is perfectly statistically distributed, you will get 3 copies of each common. Now, some you will get four-of, some two-of, and more rarely 5 and 1-of, even at the common level.

Yes, I've opened boxes were I had more of a given Rare than of a given Common. It doesn't happen often, but that's the nature of statistics.

Of course, these Commons are more than just their colors. They are also card types. Of the colors that have more interest in their creatures - will each trend towards having one of their commons be a creature, while will often get Instants and Sorceries in both, with getting a creature not in every pack, but in enough that if you open, say, three draft packs, you'll probably get 2-3.

In terms of mechanics though, that's a little harder to pin down. While, yes, the game's true-ism of how a Mechanic isn't a mechanic unless it's found at Common - this is still true. What I have to ask though, is where do you draw the line between a mechanic itself and a card that supports the mechanic? Let me give an example then. I am cracking packs in a set that includes Covoke as a mechanic, where you can tap creatures as an alternative to a card's mana cost. Now, sure, a card with the cost itself at common, like say Conclave Equenaut would be in line with the idea of having a card with that mechanic at that rarity, but what about something like Raise the Alarm? Does that count as a Convoke Mechanic or not? You're not getting a card with the mechanic directly, but you are getting a card that supports the mechanic, right?

That is, of course, even assuming that your pack has a Convoke card in it. Maybe you're getting a Raid card at common instead? Or a Landfall one? Or even the other two, but not a Convoke card?

This process is repeated at the Uncommon level as well. However, instead of having 10 slots and 121 cards to choose from, now we have three slots and 80 cards to select. At the uncommon level, what you will find is that the three cards will be of different colours, and here is where we get our first multi-colored cards.

That is done because Wizards once again cheats a little and when they put a multi-colored card into a pack, the same pack is weighted (but not guaranteed) to be of the colours that are not represented by the two remaining Uncommons. This isn't to say that it never happens, but Wizards and their sorting algorithm put a small finger on the scales to try and make sure that at the uncommon level in your packs, that four of the five colors are represented, unless of course a colourless artifact gets involved.

At this point, there's not enough sample space to tell you what card types can be procured at Uncommon, and I'm just going to throw my hands up and say "Hell if I know!" Though I am willing to bet that at least one of them will be a creature. Maybe two. But never all three.

Rares... the only thing I can tell you about them through my experience cracking boxes for my FLGS when I worked there, is that when a pack is cracked, the Rare will trend towards being one of the colors represented in the Uncommons, though as I said, this is a trend and not always the case. Of course, the type is completely up in the air, though at this point, you might find yourself with a rare land or a Planeswalker!

Of course, things don't end there! What about the specialty cards, like the Mystic Archives? Well, for the most part, they are weighted as their printed rarities for colour distribution and place in the pack. So while, for example, Dark Ritual is treated as a Rare when a Mystical Archive, not as a Common as it was in its other printings. Getting a DarkRit in a pack of Strixhaven won't affect the distribution of the common cards, and won't affect the presence of the cards at that rarity. Now, as mentioned, you are more likely to get a rare in general if one of your uncommons are rare, but that isn't a sure thing at all.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to reverse engineer the algorithms used to calculate pack distribution, and in the early days of Magic, they were fairly successful - in a sort of after the fact way. But for the most part, predictive systems are just guesswork and wishful thinking. You can't be sure what you get until you open your packs, and isn't that part of the appeal? To see what you get, rather than what you think you want? To construct decks based on the limitations before you?

That's how it's supposed to work. All of this is designed to allow players to build decks in Limited, be it Draft or Sealed, and be relatively assured that there will be enough cards in whatever colour or colours they pick to actually build a deck. There is go guarentee that it will work out, mind you. I played a Battle For Zendikar Sealed where my best card was Ob Nixilis Reignited. And it would have made for an excellent bomb in my deck, except that every other card in that color was trash, and the Judge who was running the event (I was working the store, he was running the event, and I played to make sure there were even players) agreed with my assessment that putting in Ob Nixilis wasn't worth it.

On the other side of things, I watched another player at an Origins Prerelease open their six packs, and got Battlefield Forge and four of their other rares were either or . It was an amazingly solid deck he built and when I saw what he had to work with, I told him "I think the cards are trying to tell you something."

The As-Fan is Wizards cheating at pack sorting to build interesting packs, packs that can be cracked and encourage play. This is the sort of cheating that I wholly approve of. Because it works, and is so utterly transparent that people see it and don't realize that it's actually there.

Unless you know what to look for. So look.

Of course, all this gets tossed out the window with the Whale Packs, the Collectors and Set Boosters. Those are designed to get rares and fancy art into people's hands. Not to play games with.

It's why I keep buying my boxes as Draft Boosters. It's... better that way.

Thank you for joining me this week. I hope the holidays were good for you. They were... passable for me. Join me next week as I get my feet back under me and figure out what I'm going to write. Probably something about Kamigawa as that's relevant.

Until then please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!