Ranking Cards

Krishna

I have seen a person compile a list of bad cards, really bad cards, unusable cards, etc, but has someone compiled a list that ranks cards from greatest down through unusable? Maybe even something more specific like a numeric rating system?

span_argoman

A numerical rating for cards wouldn't make sense since you have to factor in multiple factors such as which planeswalker you're playing it in, what the current mana gains of the planeswalker is, what complementary cards to this card are also in the deck, what contrary cards are in the deck, what the meta is like, whether you're going for a control,  aggro, creatureless, anti-creature or whatever build.

A simple number cannot adequately compare all these factors. A linear card ranking list would have the same issues.

Krishna

span_argoman said:

A numerical rating for cards wouldn't make sense since you have to factor in multiple factors such as which planeswalker you're playing it in, what the current mana gains of the planeswalker is, what complementary cards to this card are also in the deck, what contrary cards are in the deck, what the meta is like, whether you're going for a control,  aggro, creatureless, anti-creature or whatever build.

A simple number cannot adequately compare all these factors. A linear card ranking list would have the same issues.

It's not too hard, with a spreadsheet that can average everyone's rankings I feel that a 1-10 ranking can take into account all of these factors. In some cases, a ledger would be handy to notate why this ranking was given (ex. for ToA black node. seriously, I have a whole set of cards that is only for that). Very few cards will be considered a 10. Only the absolute best, most indispensable cards. From there, a 9 will be a card that is super versatile and synergetic in many circumstances, and a card that you often want to include in most of your decks. And the list goes down from there. For people that don't have all of the (dual-colored) Planeswalkers, their experience may vary with some cards, but the point is for it to average out with many people's input. I worked in Marketing Research, All feelings and opinions can be expressed on a 1-10 scale hahaha

span_argoman

Krishna said:

It's not too hard, with a spreadsheet that can average everyone's rankings I feel that a 1-10 ranking can take into account all of these factors. In some cases, a ledger would be handy to notate why this ranking was given (ex. for ToA black node. seriously, I have a whole set of cards that is only for that). Very few cards will be considered a 10. Only the absolute best, most indispensable cards. From there, a 9 will be a card that is super versatile and synergetic in many circumstances, and a card that you often want to include in most of your decks. And the list goes down from there. For people that don't have all of the (dual-colored) Planeswalkers, their experience may vary with some cards, but the point is for it to average out with many people's input. I worked in Marketing Research, All feelings and opinions can be expressed on a 1-10 scale hahaha

It's not whether it's difficult to do. It's whether the final number is meaningful at all.

Maybe you'll get a result like Gaea's Revenge is an 8.9, Rishkar's Expertise is 9.5, and Majestic Myriarch is 8.3. So it tells you which card is generally regarded as more useful and more versatile in general. Which is nice but is going to be pretty far off from which card you want to next add into your deck based on what you have already added, which planeswalker you're using and what level your planeswalker is.

Maybe someone with Samut at level 30 will see people rank stuff like Emrakul and Decimator highly and try to use them in the deck, not realising that they are short on ramp due to their planeswalker's lower mana gains at a lower level. Or someone uses Rishkar's Expertise in a deck without additional draw.

Sure you can express feelings and opinions on a 1-10 and you can average them out in Market Research because all you need is an approximation of what the population generally wants or feels.

You can use it to predict on average what someone from the population wants, but you can't use it to predict what a specific individual wants. Likewise, average card ratings won't be very useful to determine what card would best fit into a specific deck.

Basically I'm sceptical of how useful a numerical rating scale will be. It is too simplistic to be able to express all the information that is required to rate the card in the first place.

FindingHeart8

Simplistic, subjective, or not...I think we can all agree that Solemnity is one of the worst cards in mtgpq, if not the absolute worst.  It's only real use is to leave in your deck so if anyone else ever faces that deck controlled by an AI, it'll hurt them if they're running cycling.  It in no way ever benefits you as a player and is a waste even if it was a common, lol.