They're saying that rarity influences people's opinions on card quality. It doesn't for me. I assumed it didn't for anyone else in the cube managing business. I guess I was wrong.
I'm honestly just as surprised as Bolas that you've never run into any kind of rarity bias before, not only from cube managers but also new players, like what Sylar, dschumm, and hopefulhawkeye wrote about.
EDIT: Actually, I don't know if we are on the same page. They're not saying that they won't play a card because it's a common or uncommon and that's a conscious decision they're making. They're saying that commons and uncommons are easier to overlook due to rare bias, which I think is easily provable as multiple people on this thread alone have said they may have overlooked this card due to it being an uncommon instead of a rare.
I've run into it before, it happens quite a bit with newer players. It just hasn't influenced my cubing experience at all. Which is what I was saying about Pelakka Wurm's evaluation for the cube. I'm surprised that people think it being an uncommon has an influence on how it's evaluated for the purposes of cube design/drafting. Because it doesn't impact me or my drafters at all. I wasn't trying to be insulting at all. I'm legitimately surprised that people think that the rarity bias extends to cube management/cube drafting.
I'm surprised you think it doesn't have some psychological effect on not just newer players, but cube managers as well. I don't think as soon as someone decides to become a traditional cube manager they immediately separate all the long-standing biases that they may have had.
I think this has actually turned into a pretty interesting discussion if you're making the points I think you're making.
Are you really surprised at a statement like this?
I am willing to admit that I originally overlooked Pelakka Wurm as an uncommon. It was not present on many lists as super ramp was a little unpopular when I started, but it's presence in Conspiracy is making me give it a try.
I think overlooking a card due to rarity is probably a much more common problem than you're giving it credit, and kudos to dschumm for being willing to admit his bias when there was some. I believe I've said this on this thread already, but I believe Pelakka Wurm being uncommon may have been one factor (among many) that blinded me to its cubeability.
Do you believe this and other biases have never happened to you or most other cube managers? I'm not trying to back you into a corner, I'm just wondering what you think about biases in general when it comes to cube managers, you have a lot of experience on these forums.
I am just catching on this back and forth, and wanted to chime in that I am also quite surprised by this revelation. I feel usually when a new set comes out I want to test a bunch of C and U cards, a few rares, and usually an auto-include mythic (those darn auto-mythics). Given that I guess I'm surprised that ppl search for new cards with rarity filters. Floored actually. But it is very interesting to know. For M15 the three cards I am most excited about are C/U (plus hornet tokens!).
This thread has gotten very far off path. I shudder to think of how hard it would be to find this thread as a new cube manager looking for Green Fatty Info. I suppose I'll make an MCD for that so we can make this really great info easily available for future users.
As a casual player who has not put many cubes together, I am not very surprised by a rarity bias, especially for creature cards at the top of the curve.
Look at this case of red creature cards (with 6 or more mana) in m14 for common, uncommon, and rare rarity Cyclops Tyrant Fleshpulper Giant Shivan Dragon
The rarity ordering perfectly reflects my personal ordering.
How many times do you hear people make the comment that a common/uncommon card would be better if it was moved up to rare (and therefore improved)?
The only reason why Pelakka Wurm stayed in my first cube was that it is one of my favorite creatures. I remember thinking at the time that it is uncommon so I am probably over-evaluating how good the card is compared to large rare green creatures I had.
How many times do you hear people make the comment that a common/uncommon card would be better if it was moved up to rare (and therefore improved)?
Eh...never? Maybe this is a group thing or something casual players think? I have heard this exactly zero times in 20 years of Magic. (The only time I heard something similar was when people were talking about limited and how certain cards would better be an another rarity for the balance of the set. When you have too many burn cards in common it might be bad for the environment, but that is not what this discussion is about)
I have never consciously evaluated a card strictly on its rarity. However, rarity does correlate with complexity and "impact" which do affect my decision making.
Pelakka Wurm is very efficient, but its triggered abilities offer zero decision making. To me that feels very consistent with uncommon rarity. Terastodon, on the other hand, forces a complex decision when you put it into play, and dramatically changes the board state. This feels more "rare" to me.
I like both cards about the same, to the extent I rotate them in my cube. But it is not the colour of the symbol on the type line that affects my decision, rather what that symbol reflects.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
How many times do you hear people make the comment that a common/uncommon card would be better if it was moved up to rare (and therefore improved)?
Eh...never? Maybe this is a group thing or something casual players think? I have heard this exactly zero times in 20 years of Magic. (The only time I heard something similar was when people were talking about limited and how certain cards would better be an another rarity for the balance of the set. When you have too many burn cards in common it might be bad for the environment, but that is not what this discussion is about)
When designing a Magic set, rares can be more powerful than uncommons, and uncommons can be more powerful than commons because seeing them less frequently affects a limited environment much less. This is literally exactly what CidAvadose was talking about.
When R&D decides to print a card, they take rarity into consideration and purposely makes commons less powerful than uncommons, and uncommons less powerful than rares. This has been around since Mirage, and can be argued the Magic creation team has done a better job of this in more recent sets -- keeping the most powerful cards in a set to higher rarities is better because it's better for the limited environment.
This causes a positive correlation between rarity and power, which means that some confirmation bias is to be expected.
Well yeah ok, I see what you mean, but that would just make it another card.
If this Shock were a Lightning Bolt it would be better is true, but it doesn't mean anything when you decide the power level of Shock. But I can see where that would make some people biased. Still seems very weird to me to regard non-rares as inherently crappy. They do tend to be simpler and not ultra-broken, but most decks need good simple cards as well.
Still seems very weird to me to regard non-rares as inherently crappy. They do tend to be simpler and not ultra-broken, but most decks need good simple cards as well.
That's the point though. Most (all?) rares are inherently broken. Of course, many of them (the junk rares) are not costed well so in actual play they can't be exploited outside loose casual play. But almost every rare ever printed will win the game by itself if you can abuse it in some way. This is generally not true for uncommons (which are typically more value cards and less powerful), or commons (which typically are on curve, not above it). As Colby indicated, this was clearly done for the benefit of limited. But it does have an implication for card valuation in other environments.
Someone cited a good example of power level, but here's an even more blatant one. Compare these two cards in blue which have identical mana costs and are essentially the same creature (in that they are both big flyers). One is strictly better than the other - both printed in the exact same set. The only difference is rarity. Soul of Ravnica Mahamoti Djinn
But it does have an implication for card valuation in other environments.
Correlation does not imply causation. A card is good because it's good, regardless of its rarity.
Wizards uses rarity to make some cards better than others. But that doesn't mean that every rare is better than every common/uncommon. Because of that, letting card rarity influence how you evaluate cards does you a huge disservice when it comes to the cube, because rarity in this format is completely irrelevant. Perhaps it's because I do nothing but cube nowadays, but I don't even check a card's rarity when I'm evaluating it for cube inclusion; it's meaningless here.
Rarity bias exists, particularly for newer players. But it has no place in the cube community, and I was completely shocked to hear that people care about rarity when it comes to the cube. It's important for C/Ubes and for people designing cubes on a budget. It might matter for those folks, but I honestly don't even look/care one bit about a card's rarity -- and it certainly has no influence on my determination regarding its cubeability.
Still seems very weird to me to regard non-rares as inherently crappy. They do tend to be simpler and not ultra-broken, but most decks need good simple cards as well.
That's the point though. Most (all?) rares are inherently broken. Of course, many of them (the junk rares) are not costed well so in actual play they can't be exploited outside loose casual play. But almost every rare ever printed will win the game by itself if you can abuse it in some way. This is generally not true for uncommons (which are typically more value cards and less powerful), or commons (which typically are on curve, not above it). As Colby indicated, this was clearly done for the benefit of limited. But it does have an implication for card valuation in other environments.
Someone cited a good example of power level, but here's an even more blatant one. Compare these two cards in blue which have identical mana costs and are essentially the same creature (in that they are both big flyers). One is strictly better than the other - both printed in the exact same set. The only difference is rarity. Soul of Ravnica Mahamoti Djinn
He's not really derailing; we just need to have a mod move the rarity discussion to another thread so the Pelakka Wurm thread isn't bogged down by it anymore.
Rarity bias exists, particularly for newer players. But it has no place in the cube community, and I was completely shocked to hear that people care about rarity when it comes to the cube.
What are you talking about? No one on this entire thread has said anything even remotely close to "I'd play this card if it were a rare, but I'm not going to because it's uncommon."
I should've said: I'm surprised that rarity bias seeps into people's evaluations of cube cards. This spawned from someone saying that opinions of Pelakka Wurm might be somehow tainted by the fact that it's an uncommon, which really surprised me. I thought there could be no way that would be true, due to the very nature of this format being rarity-neutral.
Ahh, I gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah, I think it's a bias that gets less strong the longer you've been a cube manager. It can still shade the decisions of your playgroup which can alter your cube environment as well.
It can still shade the decisions of your playgroup which can alter your cube environment as well.
Has there been your experience as a Cube manager, Colby? Because I have some rather inexperienced players in my playgroup and I can't imagine any one of them suggesting I should consider a card any different way because of its rarity, and to be quite frank I never knew someone that might do that. I'm not trying to argue, I'm just genuinely curious.
Did you mean for that "not" to be there? They're both being printed in M15.
Mahamoti Djinn is being printed only in the Deckbuilder's toolkit and in the beginner decks that are given for free to new players; although they are both technically from M15, I would argue it's not correct to say they are being printed in the same set.
[quote from="ahadabans »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/card-and-archetype-discussion/563262-pelakka-wurm?comment=100"]
In all fairness Mahamoti Djinn and Soul of Ravnica are not being printed in the "exact same set", but that unfortunately has nothing to do whatsoever with Pelakka Wurm. Have any opinions about the card you would like to share, instead of derailing yet another thread?
Sorry, I did derail a little. But it was an interesting discussion.
Yeah, I like Pelakka Wurm a lot. The 7 life is very relevant, it has trample and you get something when it dies. There are more powerful options, but this guy is at the right power level for what I'm after. Plus it's a wurm and I have always liked that creature type. For Aesthetic reasons, I feel like I need at least one of those in my cube.
Agree on Wurms. Hydras have sort of superseded them as green's go-to fatty. I am definitely hoping for a really good cubeable Wurm at some point, as Pelakka just misses the cut for us since we prefer Hornet Queen by a long way.
Agree on Wurms. Hydras have sort of superseded them as green's go-to fatty. I am definitely hoping for a really good cubeable Wurm at some point, as Pelakka just misses the cut for us since we prefer Hornet Queen by a long way.
Wurms are sweet. I like hydras too though.
Hornet Queen is more powerful, but IMO it's totally out of place in the color (flying deathtouch? What??)
Agree on Wurms. Hydras have sort of superseded them as green's go-to fatty. I am definitely hoping for a really good cubeable Wurm at some point, as Pelakka just misses the cut for us since we prefer Hornet Queen by a long way.
Wurms are sweet. I like hydras too though.
Hornet Queen is more powerful, but IMO it's totally out of place in the color (flying deathtouch? What??)
Flying insects with stingers have always been green.
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I'm honestly just as surprised as Bolas that you've never run into any kind of rarity bias before, not only from cube managers but also new players, like what Sylar, dschumm, and hopefulhawkeye wrote about.
EDIT: Actually, I don't know if we are on the same page. They're not saying that they won't play a card because it's a common or uncommon and that's a conscious decision they're making. They're saying that commons and uncommons are easier to overlook due to rare bias, which I think is easily provable as multiple people on this thread alone have said they may have overlooked this card due to it being an uncommon instead of a rare.
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I think this has actually turned into a pretty interesting discussion if you're making the points I think you're making.
Are you really surprised at a statement like this?
I think overlooking a card due to rarity is probably a much more common problem than you're giving it credit, and kudos to dschumm for being willing to admit his bias when there was some. I believe I've said this on this thread already, but I believe Pelakka Wurm being uncommon may have been one factor (among many) that blinded me to its cubeability.
Do you believe this and other biases have never happened to you or most other cube managers? I'm not trying to back you into a corner, I'm just wondering what you think about biases in general when it comes to cube managers, you have a lot of experience on these forums.
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A card's rarity has zero impact on how I evaluate/draft it for the cube.
I was under the impression that all cube managers thought that way.
Like I said, I guess I was wrong, because clearly it has had an influence on other managers. So ...ya.
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This thread has gotten very far off path. I shudder to think of how hard it would be to find this thread as a new cube manager looking for Green Fatty Info. I suppose I'll make an MCD for that so we can make this really great info easily available for future users.
Look at this case of red creature cards (with 6 or more mana) in m14 for common, uncommon, and rare rarity
Cyclops Tyrant
Fleshpulper Giant
Shivan Dragon
The rarity ordering perfectly reflects my personal ordering.
How many times do you hear people make the comment that a common/uncommon card would be better if it was moved up to rare (and therefore improved)?
The only reason why Pelakka Wurm stayed in my first cube was that it is one of my favorite creatures. I remember thinking at the time that it is uncommon so I am probably over-evaluating how good the card is compared to large rare green creatures I had.
Eh...never? Maybe this is a group thing or something casual players think? I have heard this exactly zero times in 20 years of Magic. (The only time I heard something similar was when people were talking about limited and how certain cards would better be an another rarity for the balance of the set. When you have too many burn cards in common it might be bad for the environment, but that is not what this discussion is about)
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Pelakka Wurm is very efficient, but its triggered abilities offer zero decision making. To me that feels very consistent with uncommon rarity. Terastodon, on the other hand, forces a complex decision when you put it into play, and dramatically changes the board state. This feels more "rare" to me.
I like both cards about the same, to the extent I rotate them in my cube. But it is not the colour of the symbol on the type line that affects my decision, rather what that symbol reflects.
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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
When designing a Magic set, rares can be more powerful than uncommons, and uncommons can be more powerful than commons because seeing them less frequently affects a limited environment much less. This is literally exactly what CidAvadose was talking about.
When R&D decides to print a card, they take rarity into consideration and purposely makes commons less powerful than uncommons, and uncommons less powerful than rares. This has been around since Mirage, and can be argued the Magic creation team has done a better job of this in more recent sets -- keeping the most powerful cards in a set to higher rarities is better because it's better for the limited environment.
This causes a positive correlation between rarity and power, which means that some confirmation bias is to be expected.
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If this Shock were a Lightning Bolt it would be better is true, but it doesn't mean anything when you decide the power level of Shock. But I can see where that would make some people biased. Still seems very weird to me to regard non-rares as inherently crappy. They do tend to be simpler and not ultra-broken, but most decks need good simple cards as well.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
racistlooking for how hard/much foil copies are going to be for Cube acquisition.Then again, I haven't been a 'newer' player in a loooooong time. The 90's, more specifically.
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That's the point though. Most (all?) rares are inherently broken. Of course, many of them (the junk rares) are not costed well so in actual play they can't be exploited outside loose casual play. But almost every rare ever printed will win the game by itself if you can abuse it in some way. This is generally not true for uncommons (which are typically more value cards and less powerful), or commons (which typically are on curve, not above it). As Colby indicated, this was clearly done for the benefit of limited. But it does have an implication for card valuation in other environments.
Someone cited a good example of power level, but here's an even more blatant one. Compare these two cards in blue which have identical mana costs and are essentially the same creature (in that they are both big flyers). One is strictly better than the other - both printed in the exact same set. The only difference is rarity.
Soul of Ravnica
Mahamoti Djinn
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Correlation does not imply causation. A card is good because it's good, regardless of its rarity.
Wizards uses rarity to make some cards better than others. But that doesn't mean that every rare is better than every common/uncommon. Because of that, letting card rarity influence how you evaluate cards does you a huge disservice when it comes to the cube, because rarity in this format is completely irrelevant. Perhaps it's because I do nothing but cube nowadays, but I don't even check a card's rarity when I'm evaluating it for cube inclusion; it's meaningless here.
Rarity bias exists, particularly for newer players. But it has no place in the cube community, and I was completely shocked to hear that people care about rarity when it comes to the cube. It's important for C/Ubes and for people designing cubes on a budget. It might matter for those folks, but I honestly don't even look/care one bit about a card's rarity -- and it certainly has no influence on my determination regarding its cubeability.
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In all fairness Mahamoti Djinn and Soul of Ravnica are not being printed in the "exact same set", but that unfortunately has nothing to do whatsoever with Pelakka Wurm. Have any opinions about the card you would like to share, instead of derailing yet another thread?
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
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I didn't see anyone say anything about non-rares being inherently crappy.
What are you talking about? No one on this entire thread has said anything even remotely close to "I'd play this card if it were a rare, but I'm not going to because it's uncommon."
The entire discussion has been about rarity bias.
Did you mean for that "not" to be there? They're both being printed in M15.
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Has there been your experience as a Cube manager, Colby? Because I have some rather inexperienced players in my playgroup and I can't imagine any one of them suggesting I should consider a card any different way because of its rarity, and to be quite frank I never knew someone that might do that. I'm not trying to argue, I'm just genuinely curious.
Mahamoti Djinn is being printed only in the Deckbuilder's toolkit and in the beginner decks that are given for free to new players; although they are both technically from M15, I would argue it's not correct to say they are being printed in the same set.
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Sorry, I did derail a little. But it was an interesting discussion.
Yeah, I like Pelakka Wurm a lot. The 7 life is very relevant, it has trample and you get something when it dies. There are more powerful options, but this guy is at the right power level for what I'm after. Plus it's a wurm and I have always liked that creature type. For Aesthetic reasons, I feel like I need at least one of those in my cube.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Wurms are sweet. I like hydras too though.
Hornet Queen is more powerful, but IMO it's totally out of place in the color (flying deathtouch? What??)
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Flying insects with stingers have always been green.
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