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Affinity for Numbers: Oaths and Bans

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Magic is a game of numbers: sixty cards, 20 life, draw two cards, take 7 damage, and add three counters. There are even more numbers surrounding the game—facts and figures, prices and trivia, they are everywhere. In Affinity for Numbers, I uncover and highlight some of the more interesting numbers in Magic.


2 Delver Decks

StarCityGames Classic Atlanta was our first look at Modern after Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom were kicked to the curb. Two Temur Delver decks finished in the Top 16 of the tournament, including Todd Anderson's first-place deck:


4 Copies of Heartless Summoning

Remember Heartless Summoning? I so wanted that card to work in Standard, but it never quite made it further than the fringes of the metagame. Well, now it is powering out Eldrazi in Modern. Gattinator finished 5–0 in a recent Modern League event with this Mono-Black Heartless Eldrazi deck. Another similar deck did well earlier this month.


3% of Nonland Rares

Attention card pre-orderers: Somebody has done the math, and a mere 3% of nonland rares end up being valued at more than $5. Remember this when Shadows over Innistrad hype begins.


7 Reprints

There were seven reprints in Oath of the Gatewatch: Bone Saw, Mighty Leap, Negate, Netcaster Spider, Unknown Shores, Grasp of Darkness, and Strider Harness. The last two saw a rarity bump from common to uncommon. Lessons learned I guess.


15 Different Eldrazi

We had our first look at OGW Standard with StarCityGames Open Atlanta just over a week ago, and the Eldrazi have risen. Five of the Top 32 were Eldrazi decks, and fifteen different Eldrazi creatures were played.

Catacomb Sifter
World Breaker
Matter Reshaper


20% OGW Cards

The new set made a pretty good showing at SCG Open Atlanta; 20% of the cards played in the Top 32 decks were from Oath of the Gatewatch. For comparison, here is the full breakdown:

Set %
Battle for Zendikar 20%
Oath of the Gatewatch 20%
Dragons of Tarkir 18%
Khans of Tarkir 18%
Magic Origins 16%
Fate Reforged 8%


$112.16

The price for a booster box of OGW is $100 in most places. The current expected value is just over $112. Can't lose, right?


734 Weeks of Making Magic

Mark Rosewater wrote his seven-hundred-thirty-fourth Making Magic column last week. That's over fourteen years of articles. I think that record is gonna stand.


1,568 Playable Cards

Oath of the Gatewatch has added one hundred eight-four cards to the Standard pool, to bring the total to one thousand five hundred sixty-eight. Most of these are garbage in Standard. Just one hundred eighty-eight appeared in the StarCityGames Open Atlanta Top 32, and the entire Theros/Khans of Tarkir metagame only took advantage of 30% of the available cards.


1,682 Trades (and Counting)

Stormchaser Mage is the most-traded card in the last thirty days based on the card-trading site Puca Trade, with over sixteen hundred trades. This is impressive given that Oath of the Gatewatch has been out less than two weeks.


Those are all the numbers I have for you today. If you also have an affinity for numbers, and have one you think I should share, let me know on Twitter @MrVigabool.


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