I just now realized that Peacwalker Colossus might be a Metal Gear Solid reference. Peacewalker is the name of the the PSP entry in the series, and the flavor text talking about how its main use is actually for fear to maintain peace definitely feels like a call back to the way Kojima used the Metal Gears as a representation for nuclear bombs as a deterrent for war
I like Nacatl War Pride plus Nykthos in my Kruphix deck :33 Also FYI with Predation for those who don't know: With doublers like Adrix and Nev, it will create double the tokens, but the extra tokens won't fight anything.
Really interesting video, thanks. Would have been nice to get an idea on the total number of decks in each 2 year period to get an idea of scale, no doubt however many hundred out of all the decks is a tiny % but if there are 10 times as many decks some of these growth rates aren't as massive.
Probably the reason Ezuris predation was underplayed was it was only available in 1 precon from the 2015 decks and got its first reprint in 2021. So priced out for most people.
It’s that very unique topic that really only this podcast/show can do justice, and they knock it out of the park every time. It’s not easy to make statistics fun to listen to, but here we are! I crave more.
Very cool episode as always. Reprints can also be a factor. When you talked about swarmyard, it made me think about the reprint in time spiral remastered as a possible reason for an uptick because more copies are out in the wild.
I have a Wilson, raised by giants deck that's all about fighting. I found after I started playing it that I really needed a board wipe. I've had ezuris predation since I got it from a precon. I've never used it because it's 8 mana, but it fits super well into Wilson. When that card comes down, I'm just winning.
I think that two things that need to be mentioned higher are reprints (especially commander decks) and TH-cam content such as Game knights (or challenge the stats) when it comes to this.
I've been trying to convince people to play Nacatl War Pride for YEARS. Get this card in more decks. It's absolutely bonkers. If you can get extra combats, this thing just kills people
Isn't that the whole point of commenting? 1. Comment live 2. Same comment gets made in the actual video 2 minutes later. 3. Feel like a dumbass 4. Delete comment
It seems like a lot of these cards had huge jumps in play not just because they synergize but because they came in the respective precons of popular commanders. Ezuri's predation came in the Adrix and Nev precon and was 25 dollars before that reprint. I think precon bias is the biggest flaw in edhrec's numbers. I also don't know how they could combat that with the overwhelming number of people that put those lists on the internet.
40:11 Esix was also in the Adrix and Nev deck, so to truly get an idea of how much 'non pre-con decks' are running Ezuri's Predation, you need to remove both A&N's count AND Esix's, because a lot of people who bought the pre-con did not keep Adrix and Nev as the commander and instead upgraded it with Esix as their chosen commander. So Esix may not have been the face commander, but it's definitely "a pre-con commander with Ezuri's Predation in its pre-con" as much as A&N was.
Pretty sure Peacewalker Colossus is a Metal Gear Solid: Peacemaker reference. The whole series is about nuclear armed mechs maintaining peace through threatening mutually assured destruction.
How about getting a "Biggest Falls in Usage" episode too, to mirror this one? I've noticed it most with lands. Might be an obvious one, but the simple lifegain taplands used to show up in most decks, unless you were super-tryhard, but at this point, WotC are mocked for even putting them into precons (and now only show up in purposefully micro-budget decks, and sometimes not even then). But beyond that, even things like the signets seem to be getting played less now that each color has had a little more thematic ramp (like red's rituals based on amount of combat damage like Neheb the Eternal, or cards in hand like Jeska's Will) and treasures. Also things that had a brief content-creator-based signal boost like CZ's love of Vedalken Orrery or CQ's Wayfarer's Bauble, that has since died down a little. Of course the numbers might not back me up, and there may be even more noticeable cards/types of cards once it's based around data...but that would be the whole point of the episode; to actually let us know the truth! ;-)
man, I built Marchesa the Black Rose treasures after Ixilan came out. It literally played some pirates and the dragon that make treasures on etb, which I could trigger repeatedly using Marchesa. It had Marionette master and reckless fireweaver, and eveyone was like wow what do these cards do? Then Dockside and Old Gnawbone came out, it got stupid out of hand so fast. Now I see people just scoop when a Marionette master appears.
My shrines deck gets targeted every time I play it. The thing is the deck accomplishes basically nothing for a long time and people just use all of their enchantment and permanent removal on the shrines when they haven't done really anything. Nevermind all of my opponents had more threatening things that are actually doing things... I think people are just scarred from having been stomped on arena Historic format.
I've seen shrine decks gets utterly demolished down to few or no shrines left and then go "Okay well I use recursion and now you all lose 40 life". They can go insane especially since getting the WUBRG one consistently is not hard when you have literally every tutor available
@@jacobbrown9894 ah yes, but the 5 color one gets blown up immediately every time is the problem. And then the mass recursion, well.. the graveyard gets nuked or the negate they've been holding the whole game gets used. This... this is my life. :'( So I built a Mishra deck, the new precon one that all it does is make 1 4/4 a turn that usually draws me a card or two. That deck gets left alone even when I'm constantly pinging everyone with reckless fireweaver. /shrug
I don't know if anyone will see to answer this question, but I'm just curious: Is the raw number of increase affected by simply more people using web resources that EDHRec trawls? Like, aren't there just more decks overall now? Even if you're only counting decks as ones that were *CREATED* in that time frame, it still seems like there'd be a lot more. How many new decks are there at all in this time period compared to the previous? This isn't a criticism, I'm just curious.
The answer to a lot of these is money. I didn't own/play Ezuri's Predation or Duelist's Heritage because they weren't worth the price. Reprints got them into a lot more players' hands.
Do you account for any kind of potential increase in how many decks are being maintained online? So, if there has been an influx of new decks online, it may be that more people are putting their decks on any given site rather than an uptick of people who are using something like Duelist's Heritage, for example. Like, they've always been using Duelist's Heritage, but now they are also keeping track of their decks in a way that is captured by EDHRec. I doubt this accounts for this large a variance in some of these cards, but still interested if that kind of phenomenon can cause a data change like this.
Is it possible to control for the average weekly users at these times? I cant help but feel that part (not all for sure) of the growth is that. These would all still be really great growth but I wonder if some hidden growth would be seen
Arcum Daggson was bad once? Pepperidge Farm remembers. If anything, I'm actually surprised Krark Clan Ironworks went down in price from when I had my first copy, but I'm still disappointed in myself for trading it away. So, when when I picked up the Warhammer 40k precon, Forces of the Imperium, I got some redemption by picking up a copy, since I knew I was going to be making clues with Inquisitor Greyfax. Such being said, Eloise (Nephalia Sleuth) is a welcome addition, since she actually got me somewhat interested in working with clue tokens in the first place. Also, Erdwal Illuminator definitely had to go in, even if such is technically a flavor fail due to heresy, and I'm also running Treasury Thrull in the 99, so my build has a filthy Ravnican 'xenos' as well. Ah, but hey, I'm an EDH vorthos player who finds flavor in mechanics and niche interactions, not a 40k purist or even a Magic universe purist. I did the collect-a-thon build with shrines (when I realized Go-Shintai of Life's Origin was a thing) because Golos got banned before I could even play the deck, and one can imagine the anticipation with only having a few hondens to go before being caught up. Sisay, Kenny, and Jegantha also went into the 99, because I was hyped to finally successfully brew 5-color deck. The other collect-a-thon was when I scrapped my Kadena face-down build to brew Nine-Fingers Keene gates, because I wanted a Sultai colored general which wouldn't be a bore, and apparently it is surprisingly actually realistic to expect a Maze's End victory, given the right circumstances (even with just 11 gates). On a side note, mono-black tutor decks may already a thing, but since Golos got banned, I took some of the pieces and proceeded to build Varragoth (Bloodsky Sire), and I've collected combos for it including Throne, Scepter, and Crown of Empires... Mirror Box and Spy Kit... Bogbrew Witch, Bubbling Cauldron, and Festering Newt... as well as Tree of Perdition and Triskaidekaphobia.
I love how you guys always joke about mutate being the root of all evil/the biggest problem in magic. As someone who loves mutate, it is 100% the root of all evil/the biggest problem in magic (not including $1000 proxies)
Whilst it wouldn't fix treasures, WOTC should bite the bullet and errata the rules so that ALL treasures enter tapped. It would limit just how crazy they can be.
This was an amazing episode! It's an interesting look at how many different commander niches have opened up across the last few years, and it's especially interesting since I only just started playing more heavily at the start of the pandemic, which sort of lines up with the timeline presented in this episode. Hope someone is able to post bail for Matt soon!
I've used Duelists' Heritage in Tivit to get people to swing at other opponents, and eventually someone noticed that it's effectively been a Ghostly Prison for me.
Ezuri's Predation became popular because it previously only had a single printing and was about 25 dollars. Now it's like a dollar and a half and I believe it was in a commander precon
Prior to ezuri's predation showing up in strixhaven precons, it had gotten kinda expensive. I think it's biggest reason for the jump is the fact that it is now at a reasonable price.
What is the “total” deck count from before compared to now? Is part of the increase accounted for by a raw increase in number of decks? (Admittedly, I dozed off for a bit while watching if this was addressed)
Has there been an episode about deck archetypes that were mere transpositions from other formats? I've been thinking about it since I built my Jhoira WC Aetherflux Reservoir which were pretty much just the exact same concept as Kaladesh block storm. I'm sure there are tons more that are just commander versions of existing 60-card decks. I am thinking of this now because it feels like the opposite of this topic; there are no surprises with the cards that get used since they already cross-format staples.
But how many decks were cataloged back then vs how many are there now? Going up from 1500->15000 over a four year span doesn’t mean much it the overall database grew by roughly the same ratio
Edh players have always been soft by MTG standards. They've become less soft and now I see the cards that drew gasps and wines before being played commonly played by "nice" players. I almost died laughing when Command Zone started recommending static artifact hate in their deck techs 🤣
I just now realized that Peacwalker Colossus might be a Metal Gear Solid reference. Peacewalker is the name of the the PSP entry in the series, and the flavor text talking about how its main use is actually for fear to maintain peace definitely feels like a call back to the way Kojima used the Metal Gears as a representation for nuclear bombs as a deterrent for war
Justice for Lonis, she came before Eloise and cares about clues a lot
Wanted to write the Same
I like Nacatl War Pride plus Nykthos in my Kruphix deck :33
Also FYI with Predation for those who don't know: With doublers like Adrix and Nev, it will create double the tokens, but the extra tokens won't fight anything.
Really interesting video, thanks. Would have been nice to get an idea on the total number of decks in each 2 year period to get an idea of scale, no doubt however many hundred out of all the decks is a tiny % but if there are 10 times as many decks some of these growth rates aren't as massive.
Probably the reason Ezuris predation was underplayed was it was only available in 1 precon from the 2015 decks and got its first reprint in 2021. So priced out for most people.
I'd love to see more stat episodes like this! It really does a good job of showing what's going on in the format
It’s that very unique topic that really only this podcast/show can do justice, and they knock it out of the park every time. It’s not easy to make statistics fun to listen to, but here we are! I crave more.
Glad to see an episode on stats again! I enjoy all the episodes but my favorite are stats based
Nacatl War-Pride + Natural Affinity is a heck of a win condition. Hope you like blocking with your lands.
Very cool episode as always. Reprints can also be a factor. When you talked about swarmyard, it made me think about the reprint in time spiral remastered as a possible reason for an uptick because more copies are out in the wild.
I have a Wilson, raised by giants deck that's all about fighting. I found after I started playing it that I really needed a board wipe. I've had ezuris predation since I got it from a precon. I've never used it because it's 8 mana, but it fits super well into Wilson. When that card comes down, I'm just winning.
Look into Spinning Wheel Kick if you haven’t already. Pretty deece for mono green
Great episode.
Swarmyard was a very expensive land but got 2 reprints recently
I think that two things that need to be mentioned higher are reprints (especially commander decks) and TH-cam content such as Game knights (or challenge the stats) when it comes to this.
I've been trying to convince people to play Nacatl War Pride for YEARS. Get this card in more decks. It's absolutely bonkers. If you can get extra combats, this thing just kills people
*Tables. This card kills tables.
Imagine commenting before you could have watched the whole video!?
Bunch of animals out there..
Isn't that the whole point of commenting?
1. Comment live
2. Same comment gets made in the actual video 2 minutes later.
3. Feel like a dumbass
4. Delete comment
@@mangohavoc6428 Haha you'd think we were raised in a barn!
@@krazykilper close the door!
@@raccoonhatcity7627 You've got every light in the house on!
It seems like a lot of these cards had huge jumps in play not just because they synergize but because they came in the respective precons of popular commanders.
Ezuri's predation came in the Adrix and Nev precon and was 25 dollars before that reprint.
I think precon bias is the biggest flaw in edhrec's numbers. I also don't know how they could combat that with the overwhelming number of people that put those lists on the internet.
40:11 Esix was also in the Adrix and Nev deck, so to truly get an idea of how much 'non pre-con decks' are running Ezuri's Predation, you need to remove both A&N's count AND Esix's, because a lot of people who bought the pre-con did not keep Adrix and Nev as the commander and instead upgraded it with Esix as their chosen commander. So Esix may not have been the face commander, but it's definitely "a pre-con commander with Ezuri's Predation in its pre-con" as much as A&N was.
I use chain of acid instead of chain of smog on my Beledros Witherblomm deck and the mess is even better!
Isshin probably had a bit to do with the boost in Duelist's Heritage as well. Browsing his rec page is what pointed it out to me originally.
Blocks against War-Pride are never difficult, they might be backbreaking, but never difficult^^
Pretty sure Peacewalker Colossus is a Metal Gear Solid: Peacemaker reference. The whole series is about nuclear armed mechs maintaining peace through threatening mutually assured destruction.
Nacatl War-Pride makes the rest of the players at the table pucker up. Add Second Harvest and/or extra combat steps to taste. :D
Mishra is my new energy commander. Seems like it might be easy to take infinite turns with Gonti's Heart and energy generators.
Ezuri's Predation was recently reprinted and tanked the price from $20 to less than a dollar.
Yeah I came here to say the same thing. It would have been in a lot more decks.
How about getting a "Biggest Falls in Usage" episode too, to mirror this one? I've noticed it most with lands. Might be an obvious one, but the simple lifegain taplands used to show up in most decks, unless you were super-tryhard, but at this point, WotC are mocked for even putting them into precons (and now only show up in purposefully micro-budget decks, and sometimes not even then). But beyond that, even things like the signets seem to be getting played less now that each color has had a little more thematic ramp (like red's rituals based on amount of combat damage like Neheb the Eternal, or cards in hand like Jeska's Will) and treasures. Also things that had a brief content-creator-based signal boost like CZ's love of Vedalken Orrery or CQ's Wayfarer's Bauble, that has since died down a little. Of course the numbers might not back me up, and there may be even more noticeable cards/types of cards once it's based around data...but that would be the whole point of the episode; to actually let us know the truth! ;-)
"Dad joke attempt number: Bad" is priceless
great vid as always guys!
Ezuri Predation was expensive between m21 and midnight hunt. That also may be why
Dana just casually drinking olive brine
Oddly enough, and I hate to publicly admit this, I do love brine from a jar of green olives, and straight up take a sip whenever I eat an olive.
@@danaroach29 green olive brine is like opera, only the people that love it understand 🤣👍
man, I built Marchesa the Black Rose treasures after Ixilan came out. It literally played some pirates and the dragon that make treasures on etb, which I could trigger repeatedly using Marchesa. It had Marionette master and reckless fireweaver, and eveyone was like wow what do these cards do? Then Dockside and Old Gnawbone came out, it got stupid out of hand so fast. Now I see people just scoop when a Marionette master appears.
My shrines deck gets targeted every time I play it. The thing is the deck accomplishes basically nothing for a long time and people just use all of their enchantment and permanent removal on the shrines when they haven't done really anything. Nevermind all of my opponents had more threatening things that are actually doing things... I think people are just scarred from having been stomped on arena Historic format.
I've seen shrine decks gets utterly demolished down to few or no shrines left and then go "Okay well I use recursion and now you all lose 40 life". They can go insane especially since getting the WUBRG one consistently is not hard when you have literally every tutor available
@@jacobbrown9894 ah yes, but the 5 color one gets blown up immediately every time is the problem. And then the mass recursion, well.. the graveyard gets nuked or the negate they've been holding the whole game gets used.
This... this is my life. :'(
So I built a Mishra deck, the new precon one that all it does is make 1 4/4 a turn that usually draws me a card or two. That deck gets left alone even when I'm constantly pinging everyone with reckless fireweaver. /shrug
I don't know if anyone will see to answer this question, but I'm just curious: Is the raw number of increase affected by simply more people using web resources that EDHRec trawls? Like, aren't there just more decks overall now? Even if you're only counting decks as ones that were *CREATED* in that time frame, it still seems like there'd be a lot more. How many new decks are there at all in this time period compared to the previous?
This isn't a criticism, I'm just curious.
Considering the popularization of commander online in the recent years it should have some weight imo
The answer to a lot of these is money. I didn't own/play Ezuri's Predation or Duelist's Heritage because they weren't worth the price. Reprints got them into a lot more players' hands.
How many times has Nacatl War-Pride been mentioned in Challenge the Stats?
Im glad the sponsorship intro has been moved so the cast intro comes first.
Alright players! Question time! Why none of you don't use the power of the almighty Silverwing squadron?
Do you account for any kind of potential increase in how many decks are being maintained online? So, if there has been an influx of new decks online, it may be that more people are putting their decks on any given site rather than an uptick of people who are using something like Duelist's Heritage, for example. Like, they've always been using Duelist's Heritage, but now they are also keeping track of their decks in a way that is captured by EDHRec. I doubt this accounts for this large a variance in some of these cards, but still interested if that kind of phenomenon can cause a data change like this.
Reckless Fire weaver is my boy! I feel like my secret weapon has been discovered now tho...
Is it possible to control for the average weekly users at these times? I cant help but feel that part (not all for sure) of the growth is that. These would all still be really great growth but I wonder if some hidden growth would be seen
What's going on with the apostrophe placement on inundate vs cyclonic?
Is the black lotus the crime or the reward for finding him?! 🤔
36:30 - can we get more Joey ASMR ? ^_^
Nacatyl War Pride in Chatterfang seems really gross!?
I never would have guessed Matt had a dark side like that. Those poor innocent people.
Icewind Dale looks like the construction guy who leers at every woman passerby.
A lot of the cards that jumped showed up in precons. So the price dropped it seems
inundate is awesome in my sea monster deck.
I thought my cell mate looked familiar before he made bail?
25:12 If you didn't want them to get bounced to your hand you should've played blue.
We have a perfectly good Energy commander: Atraxa, and I don't want to see any more!
Reap + Carpet of flowers?
Arcum Daggson was bad once?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
If anything, I'm actually surprised Krark Clan Ironworks went down in price from when I had my first copy, but I'm still disappointed in myself for trading it away. So, when when I picked up the Warhammer 40k precon, Forces of the Imperium, I got some redemption by picking up a copy, since I knew I was going to be making clues with Inquisitor Greyfax.
Such being said, Eloise (Nephalia Sleuth) is a welcome addition, since she actually got me somewhat interested in working with clue tokens in the first place. Also, Erdwal Illuminator definitely had to go in, even if such is technically a flavor fail due to heresy, and I'm also running Treasury Thrull in the 99, so my build has a filthy Ravnican 'xenos' as well. Ah, but hey, I'm an EDH vorthos player who finds flavor in mechanics and niche interactions, not a 40k purist or even a Magic universe purist.
I did the collect-a-thon build with shrines (when I realized Go-Shintai of Life's Origin was a thing) because Golos got banned before I could even play the deck, and one can imagine the anticipation with only having a few hondens to go before being caught up. Sisay, Kenny, and Jegantha also went into the 99, because I was hyped to finally successfully brew 5-color deck.
The other collect-a-thon was when I scrapped my Kadena face-down build to brew Nine-Fingers Keene gates, because I wanted a Sultai colored general which wouldn't be a bore, and apparently it is surprisingly actually realistic to expect a Maze's End victory, given the right circumstances (even with just 11 gates).
On a side note, mono-black tutor decks may already a thing, but since Golos got banned, I took some of the pieces and proceeded to build Varragoth (Bloodsky Sire), and I've collected combos for it including Throne, Scepter, and Crown of Empires... Mirror Box and Spy Kit... Bogbrew Witch, Bubbling Cauldron, and Festering Newt... as well as Tree of Perdition and Triskaidekaphobia.
When in doubt mutate it out lmao
I love how you guys always joke about mutate being the root of all evil/the biggest problem in magic. As someone who loves mutate, it is 100% the root of all evil/the biggest problem in magic (not including $1000 proxies)
First, looking forward to listening
twitter will be here, settle down
Whilst it wouldn't fix treasures, WOTC should bite the bullet and errata the rules so that ALL treasures enter tapped. It would limit just how crazy they can be.
People are actually playing Chatter of the Squirrel? Lol gross
This was an amazing episode! It's an interesting look at how many different commander niches have opened up across the last few years, and it's especially interesting since I only just started playing more heavily at the start of the pandemic, which sort of lines up with the timeline presented in this episode.
Hope someone is able to post bail for Matt soon!
Dana in high good form today!
"Nothing in Commander particularly cared about that until we got El--."
Lonis: "Am I nothing to you?"
I've used Duelists' Heritage in Tivit to get people to swing at other opponents, and eventually someone noticed that it's effectively been a Ghostly Prison for me.
Ezuri's Predation became popular because it previously only had a single printing and was about 25 dollars. Now it's like a dollar and a half and I believe it was in a commander precon
I legit giggled at the Mutate comment. A+ work.
Pretty sure that Ezuri’s Predation spiked in usage after Craig Blanchette used it on Game Knights.
I hope Matt comes back soon from the Guilds Reunion
Prior to ezuri's predation showing up in strixhaven precons, it had gotten kinda expensive. I think it's biggest reason for the jump is the fact that it is now at a reasonable price.
What is the “total” deck count from before compared to now? Is part of the increase accounted for by a raw increase in number of decks? (Admittedly, I dozed off for a bit while watching if this was addressed)
Did you guys take into account the increase in commander/MTG players?
Took me zero days to be sick of shrine decks.
Has there been an episode about deck archetypes that were mere transpositions from other formats? I've been thinking about it since I built my Jhoira WC Aetherflux Reservoir which were pretty much just the exact same concept as Kaladesh block storm. I'm sure there are tons more that are just commander versions of existing 60-card decks. I am thinking of this now because it feels like the opposite of this topic; there are no surprises with the cards that get used since they already cross-format staples.
We are blind to the
Worlds within us
Waiting to be born
Rograhk and thrasios great stuff tribal is tier S cedh.
Two minutes in. "Hwat?!"
Why did you not compare number of decks as a whole? Sure, 1000% increase in numbers is massive, but not if every other card grew 800%
What does a space turkey say?
"Hubble, hubble."
But how many decks were cataloged back then vs how many are there now? Going up from 1500->15000 over a four year span doesn’t mean much it the overall database grew by roughly the same ratio
Edh players have always been soft by MTG standards. They've become less soft and now I see the cards that drew gasps and wines before being played commonly played by "nice" players. I almost died laughing when Command Zone started recommending static artifact hate in their deck techs 🤣