A full list of results, with all cards that received votes and the number of lists a card appeared on, can be found on this Google spreadsheet.
Thanks to all 10 voters! (More participation would've been great, but on the brightside having 10 voters made calculations SUPER EASY!)
Trivia, Useless Ramblings, and Facts (TURF)
Perfect no Longer - In 2016, with 23 voters Library of Alexandria obtained a perfect score meaning everyone put it at #1. Today it ties for 3rd, no doubt due to the change in voting criteria and small sample size.
That's So Fetch - Despite Regina George telling us to "Stop trying to make Fetch happen" it is happening! The Fetchlands are #1 in our rankings. Strip Mine and Mana Confluence continue to sit near the top of our rankings along with newcomer Prismatic Vista from Modern Horizons.
Big Gains/Steep Falls - Ancient Tomb climbed from 11th in 2016 to 7th today. Maze of Ith fell from 7th in 2016 to tied for 15th today. Horizon Canopy is now the Horizon Lands and as a cycle their ranking improved from 14th for just Horizon Canopy to 11th for the whole cycle.
Hello and Goodbye - Newcomers to the Lands list include Prismatic Vista (#2), the Horizon Lands (#11), Ash Barrens (#12), Manlands (15th-T) are new to this list but only because of changes to categorization, and finally Blast Zone (#20). Paliano, the High City and Mishra's Workshop have fallen out of the rankings and received no votes this year.
That's a wrap everyone! Thank you all for indulging my idea to resurrect this project to see what the results would look like today. I truly believe that, contrary to the naysayers, this produced a lot of information that was both interesting and useful. I know I'll be keeping these list in mind as I expand my cube list to 500 cards. I hope others will find ways to apply this information to their own cubes or at least to keep it in mind in future discussions about cube. I seriously underestimated the number of hours it takes to host this project, but it was a labor of love so I don't mind it. I hope someone else takes the reins in a couple years so we can see where we stand after the newest commander set, Eldraine, Theros, and what comes after. Cheers!
Thanks so much, BW! I dropped off the map for the last few rounds of voting, but I was paying attention throughout. I'm really grateful for all your hard work, and I agree that we got some fun, useful data.
And thanks everyone else who participated! It's been lots of fun.
Not unexpected results at all!
I wonder what everyone thinks of City of Ass, lol. It seems better than Grand Coliseum at least.
Better than The Grand Coliseum, the KTK/ALA tri-lands, and Teramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds. I imagine it will still be better than Fabled Passage, as well, but will have to see how Fabled Passage plays out first. City of Ass vs. Ash Barrens is an interesting, not sure on that one.
Man, I hate to be a hater (hyprocrite?)... But part of the reason I didn't vote in the last few threads is the number of people with absurd lists skewing everything. Lost my passion for it.
Maybe it was the criteria? If you don't cube with it, then don't vote on it?How important the card is , is pretty subjective. Whereas contributing to winning is much less so.
Respect to blackwaltz for putting in the work. Seriously debated holding on tongue about this as I didn't want to taint the effort you put in, which is acknowledged and greatly appreciated.
Not having library of Alexandria and strip mine as 1-2 is completely absurd in my eyes.
Perhaps there's a great focus on how important those lands are to your cube? If that's the case I guess if you are weighing the entire cycle of a land vs a single land, I can see how you arrive at that conclusion?
If power level or chances to win are at all in your consideration, it boggles my mind how any different conclusion can be arrived at.
I think in the previous rounds, the criteria didn't really change anything for me. The most powerful cards were also the ones that were most likely to be maindecked, most critical to winning, and most important to the cube. But with the Land vote, the criteria did change my votes a bit so I wasn't voting for the most strictly powerful cards.
I agree Library and Strip Mine are definitely the most powerful lands, but in terms of importance to cube, I think having good mana fixing is #1. Likewise, for likelihood of maindecking, I'm not of the opinion that Library belongs in mono red aggro, but I'll include an on-color dual land no matter the archetype. I'd even include a Misty Rainforest and a Taiga in my Blue/Red deck with no green, so the mana fixing lands are more likely to be maindecked. Strip Mine is easier to fit into any deck, but I still might be reluctant to include it in a 5-color goodstuff deck.
In terms of being critical to winning, Library is definitely a dumb card, but having good mana is also critical to winning. So that's why I put the Duals and Fetches above those 2 cards.
Man, I hate to be a hater (hyprocrite?)... But part of the reason I didn't vote in the last few threads is the number of people with absurd lists skewing everything. Lost my passion for it.
The thing is, the best way to counterbalance those votes is to vote yourself. I only saw one voter that consistently had lists that were wildly different from the rest and in cases where more people voted, it didn't have the same degree of impact on the results. It wasn't my job to call out outlier lists though, I tried to remain neutral even when I vehemently disagreed. There was a steep dropoff in voters once we got beyond monocolor and while I can appreciate guilds/shards being a bit cumbersome, people didn't come back to vote on colorless or lands either. The end result being that more of what I'd call the "non-traditional" votes carried more weight on these final categories.
The voting criteria gave a little more deference to slightly less powerful cubes where cards like Fetches are more likely to be among the top cards and cards like Library of Alexandria don't factor. Library still came in 3rd so I wouldn't read to much into the drop. The list is still telling you "Play Library, Library is dumb." lol.
I apologize if the delays between some later rounds due to personal family matters was responsible for the loss of interest in voting. I also appreciate the shoutout for work involved. It is much more involved than I could appreciate at the beginning. I know someone mentioned doing a ranking project by card type, color, and CMC, I hope to see that materialize soon--it sounds fun and useful as well!
I think in the previous rounds, the criteria didn't really change anything for me. The most powerful cards were also the ones that were most likely to be maindecked, most critical to winning, and most important to the cube. But with the Land vote, the criteria did change my votes a bit so I wasn't voting for the most strictly powerful cards.
I agree Library and Strip Mine are definitely the most powerful lands, but in terms of importance to cube, I think having good mana fixing is #1. Likewise, for likelihood of maindecking, I'm not of the opinion that Library belongs in mono red aggro, but I'll include an on-color dual land no matter the archetype. I'd even include a Misty Rainforest and a Taiga in my Blue/Red deck with no green, so the mana fixing lands are more likely to be maindecked. Strip Mine is easier to fit into any deck, but I still might be reluctant to include it in a 5-color goodstuff deck.
In terms of being critical to winning, Library is definitely a dumb card, but having good mana is also critical to winning. So that's why I put the Duals and Fetches above those 2 cards.
I guess that’s part of the issue with a wide variety of criteria then, there isn’t any sort of weighting between the criteria.
I valued power greater than the other criteria, while others didn’t.
You can get wildly different lists depending on how you weight the criteria.
Makes the ranking a bit too subjective in my eyes. But still appreciate and respect the work.
It has value for people inexperienced in cube.
I think this year with the criteria there was a real rift between "Power Rankings" and "Performance Rankings". Maindeckability is more of a cube performance rating. I think a lot of people cut cards based off of how often they see something in the sideboard. Something can be super powerful but if it isnt being maindecked as much it isnt performing its job well in a cube environment.
I'm not sure if I am the one with consistently different lists, but I think my lists were often much different because they were curated strictly from the data on my cube without personal opinion. With winning % and main deck % weighted equally i ranked my list and thats what I put up for my rankings. Theres definitely times where I was like dang how is this card ranked above this? But thats what the data said.
FWIW I like the criteria the way it was set up, but I dont think people had the ability to follow it very well because most people just dont track any stats for their cubes. so at best they only have a general feel of one of the major criteria for the rankings which is how many times something is sideboarded vs maindecked.
I think my lists, while different, provided an interesting contrast of personal opinion vs how cards have actually performed in my cube.
It's all for fun anyways. Part of the reason I felt comfortable posting lists that were a little bit different is because of the fact I knew the majority people would have the standard list and in the end my ranking would mean very little to the outcome.
I apologize BlackWaltz if my rating system skewed the results in a direction away from the intended results. I love these kinds of things, I just thought i would take a bit of a different approach this year since I actually have a data set for maindeckability and importance to winning from my cube.
I was trying to avoid calling out a poster by name, but since you asked, I was referring to your votes. There's nothing to apologize for though, I set forth the criteria for voting and if you believe your system was the best way to vote according to that criteria then you voted appropriately. The voting criteria was meant to encourage some representation of cubes outside of the "traditional" power-focused MTGS cube design, but to give a bit more deference towards the more traditional philosophy.
I think a good practice for future years might be to knock out votes that only get 1 vote. It would save the organizer time and reduce the quantity of information that is an extreme outlier. It is particularly disconcerting when a card that only got 1 vote makes a top 20 because one person voted it near the top of their list even if nobody else voted for it. I think there was only 1-2 instances of this, but that is too many I think. Voter thresholds might be something to consider next time too. Like maybe a voting thread doesn't close until we have at least 15 votes? These are things for the next organizer to consider down the road....
All good! I know some of my lists were a bit wacky! Had a lot of discussions on discord with steveman and others about how my lists were shaking out lol.
I think the biggest issue was we just didnt get the participation on the same consistent level this year. seems like overall MTGS has slowed down a lot.
Its unfortunate that some people were turned off participating potentially in part because of my voting system. That wasn't the intention.
It was great fun and it was interesting for me to personally look at my cube from these measurements. Next time we do it maybe i will go a more traditional route. Lol I am just about to cut my number 1 black card vraska's contempt for murderous rider anyways so we dont have to worry about contempt messing up the rankings anymore at least! haha
Thanks again for all the work. I wonder if there is a way to branch out and get more results compiles from somewhere like discord or something.
2) Prismatic Vista
3-T) Strip Mine
3-T) Library of Alexandria
4) Mana Confluence
5) ABU Dual Lands (E.g. Tundra)
6) City of Brass
7) Ancient Tomb
8) Shocklands (E.g. Sacred Foundry)
9) Wasteland
10) Mishra's Factory
11) Horizon Lands (E.g Nurturing Peatland)
12) Ash Barrens
13) Mutavault
14) Grand Coliseum
15-T) Manlands (E.g. Celestial Colonnade)
15-T) Maze of Ith
16) Rishadan Port
17) Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse
18-T) Gemstone Mine
18-T) Check Lands (E.g. Drowned Catacomb)
19) Painlands (E.g. Sulfurous Springs)
20) Blast Zone
A full list of results, with all cards that received votes and the number of lists a card appeared on, can be found on this Google spreadsheet.
Thanks to all 10 voters! (More participation would've been great, but on the brightside having 10 voters made calculations SUPER EASY!)
Trivia, Useless Ramblings, and Facts (TURF)
Perfect no Longer - In 2016, with 23 voters Library of Alexandria obtained a perfect score meaning everyone put it at #1. Today it ties for 3rd, no doubt due to the change in voting criteria and small sample size.
That's So Fetch - Despite Regina George telling us to "Stop trying to make Fetch happen" it is happening! The Fetchlands are #1 in our rankings. Strip Mine and Mana Confluence continue to sit near the top of our rankings along with newcomer Prismatic Vista from Modern Horizons.
Big Gains/Steep Falls - Ancient Tomb climbed from 11th in 2016 to 7th today. Maze of Ith fell from 7th in 2016 to tied for 15th today. Horizon Canopy is now the Horizon Lands and as a cycle their ranking improved from 14th for just Horizon Canopy to 11th for the whole cycle.
Hello and Goodbye - Newcomers to the Lands list include Prismatic Vista (#2), the Horizon Lands (#11), Ash Barrens (#12), Manlands (15th-T) are new to this list but only because of changes to categorization, and finally Blast Zone (#20). Paliano, the High City and Mishra's Workshop have fallen out of the rankings and received no votes this year.
That's a wrap everyone! Thank you all for indulging my idea to resurrect this project to see what the results would look like today. I truly believe that, contrary to the naysayers, this produced a lot of information that was both interesting and useful. I know I'll be keeping these list in mind as I expand my cube list to 500 cards. I hope others will find ways to apply this information to their own cubes or at least to keep it in mind in future discussions about cube. I seriously underestimated the number of hours it takes to host this project, but it was a labor of love so I don't mind it. I hope someone else takes the reins in a couple years so we can see where we stand after the newest commander set, Eldraine, Theros, and what comes after. Cheers!
And thanks everyone else who participated! It's been lots of fun.
My Cube on Cube Tutor
I wonder what everyone thinks of City of Ass, lol. It seems better than Grand Coliseum at least.
Better than The Grand Coliseum, the KTK/ALA tri-lands, and Teramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds. I imagine it will still be better than Fabled Passage, as well, but will have to see how Fabled Passage plays out first. City of Ass vs. Ash Barrens is an interesting, not sure on that one.
[180 classic cube]
I think it's better than City of Brass. Remember with Garruk it's 3 mana, nice little bonus.
360 card powered Chicago cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/e7r
2020 Numerical Power Rankings:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/817969-2020-numerical-cube-power-rankings
2018 CubeTutor Power Rankings:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/803301-cubetutor-power-rankings-2018-by-color-and-cmc
Maybe it was the criteria? If you don't cube with it, then don't vote on it?How important the card is , is pretty subjective. Whereas contributing to winning is much less so.
Respect to blackwaltz for putting in the work. Seriously debated holding on tongue about this as I didn't want to taint the effort you put in, which is acknowledged and greatly appreciated.
Not having library of Alexandria and strip mine as 1-2 is completely absurd in my eyes.
Perhaps there's a great focus on how important those lands are to your cube? If that's the case I guess if you are weighing the entire cycle of a land vs a single land, I can see how you arrive at that conclusion?
If power level or chances to win are at all in your consideration, it boggles my mind how any different conclusion can be arrived at.
Last Updated 02/07/24
Streaming Standard/Cube on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/heisenb3rg96
Strategy Twitter https://www.twitter.com/heisenb3rg
I agree Library and Strip Mine are definitely the most powerful lands, but in terms of importance to cube, I think having good mana fixing is #1. Likewise, for likelihood of maindecking, I'm not of the opinion that Library belongs in mono red aggro, but I'll include an on-color dual land no matter the archetype. I'd even include a Misty Rainforest and a Taiga in my Blue/Red deck with no green, so the mana fixing lands are more likely to be maindecked. Strip Mine is easier to fit into any deck, but I still might be reluctant to include it in a 5-color goodstuff deck.
In terms of being critical to winning, Library is definitely a dumb card, but having good mana is also critical to winning. So that's why I put the Duals and Fetches above those 2 cards.
[180 classic cube]
The thing is, the best way to counterbalance those votes is to vote yourself. I only saw one voter that consistently had lists that were wildly different from the rest and in cases where more people voted, it didn't have the same degree of impact on the results. It wasn't my job to call out outlier lists though, I tried to remain neutral even when I vehemently disagreed. There was a steep dropoff in voters once we got beyond monocolor and while I can appreciate guilds/shards being a bit cumbersome, people didn't come back to vote on colorless or lands either. The end result being that more of what I'd call the "non-traditional" votes carried more weight on these final categories.
The voting criteria gave a little more deference to slightly less powerful cubes where cards like Fetches are more likely to be among the top cards and cards like Library of Alexandria don't factor. Library still came in 3rd so I wouldn't read to much into the drop. The list is still telling you "Play Library, Library is dumb." lol.
I apologize if the delays between some later rounds due to personal family matters was responsible for the loss of interest in voting. I also appreciate the shoutout for work involved. It is much more involved than I could appreciate at the beginning. I know someone mentioned doing a ranking project by card type, color, and CMC, I hope to see that materialize soon--it sounds fun and useful as well!
I guess that’s part of the issue with a wide variety of criteria then, there isn’t any sort of weighting between the criteria.
I valued power greater than the other criteria, while others didn’t.
You can get wildly different lists depending on how you weight the criteria.
Makes the ranking a bit too subjective in my eyes. But still appreciate and respect the work.
It has value for people inexperienced in cube.
Last Updated 02/07/24
Streaming Standard/Cube on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/heisenb3rg96
Strategy Twitter https://www.twitter.com/heisenb3rg
I'm not sure if I am the one with consistently different lists, but I think my lists were often much different because they were curated strictly from the data on my cube without personal opinion. With winning % and main deck % weighted equally i ranked my list and thats what I put up for my rankings. Theres definitely times where I was like dang how is this card ranked above this? But thats what the data said.
FWIW I like the criteria the way it was set up, but I dont think people had the ability to follow it very well because most people just dont track any stats for their cubes. so at best they only have a general feel of one of the major criteria for the rankings which is how many times something is sideboarded vs maindecked.
I think my lists, while different, provided an interesting contrast of personal opinion vs how cards have actually performed in my cube.
It's all for fun anyways. Part of the reason I felt comfortable posting lists that were a little bit different is because of the fact I knew the majority people would have the standard list and in the end my ranking would mean very little to the outcome.
I apologize BlackWaltz if my rating system skewed the results in a direction away from the intended results. I love these kinds of things, I just thought i would take a bit of a different approach this year since I actually have a data set for maindeckability and importance to winning from my cube.
I think a good practice for future years might be to knock out votes that only get 1 vote. It would save the organizer time and reduce the quantity of information that is an extreme outlier. It is particularly disconcerting when a card that only got 1 vote makes a top 20 because one person voted it near the top of their list even if nobody else voted for it. I think there was only 1-2 instances of this, but that is too many I think. Voter thresholds might be something to consider next time too. Like maybe a voting thread doesn't close until we have at least 15 votes? These are things for the next organizer to consider down the road....
I think the biggest issue was we just didnt get the participation on the same consistent level this year. seems like overall MTGS has slowed down a lot.
Its unfortunate that some people were turned off participating potentially in part because of my voting system. That wasn't the intention.
It was great fun and it was interesting for me to personally look at my cube from these measurements. Next time we do it maybe i will go a more traditional route. Lol I am just about to cut my number 1 black card vraska's contempt for murderous rider anyways so we dont have to worry about contempt messing up the rankings anymore at least! haha
Thanks again for all the work. I wonder if there is a way to branch out and get more results compiles from somewhere like discord or something.