Recently, a lot of writers, bloggers, podcasters, etc., have been talking about Mythics. We’ve heard the hype; let’s look at some numbers (and decklists). Let’s also look at the biggest positive effect of Mythics on Magic.
Background
The Mythic rarity was introduced with Shards of Alara. Mythics are cards that are rarer than typical rares. Exactly how much rarer is not certain, but here’s what Wizards said when they introduced Mythics:
In conjunction with the reduction of set sizes, Wizards will also be introducing a new level of rarity called mythic rare. The mythic rare cards will appear in approximately 1 out of every 8 booster packs instead of a rare.
Mark Rosewater wrote the article that first explained what Wizards intends to do with Mythic Rares. Here’s a quote:
This now leads us to the next question: How are cards split between rare and mythic rare? Or more to the point, what kind of cards are going to become mythic rares? We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set’s most powerful tournament-level cards.
We’ve also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I’ll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char. That also addresses a long-standing issue that some players have had with certain rares like dual lands. Because we’re making fewer cards per set, in the new world individual rares will be easier to acquire because each rare in a large set now appears 25% more often.
That last statement is true, by the way. Mythics are roughly twice as scarce as rares, nowadays, and rares are easier to acquire. Ben Bleweiss did the math in this early article on Mythics.
I tend to do the math in a slightly different way. Because both Ingrid and I get boxes of product for judging, and we end up with more product that we can possibly draft through, so we often end up busting spare packs playing pack wars. What I want is a playset of everything, so I can build different decks every week. I’m almost always short, but I’m digressing. Let’s do the numbers.
How many packs do you need to open to see, on average, a playset of each card? We’ll start with Ravnica, the last big Expert set with no Mythics and no timeshifted cards. Ravnica had 11 commons per pack (no basic land). The set also had 110 commons. To get a playset of any given common, you would have to see 440 cards, which equates to opening 44 boosters, or roughly 1.2 booster boxes. The set had 88 uncommons, packaged three per booster. That means that you needed to open about 117 boosters to get a playset of any given uncommon (or every uncommon — the math is the same either way.
Ravnica (set, not block)
Commons — playset per 44 boosters.
Uncommons — open 117 boosters to get a playset
Rares — open 352 boosters to get a playset
Mythic Rares — n/a
Rise of the Eldrazi
Commons — open 40 boosters
Uncommons — open 80 boosters
Rares — open 186 boosters
Mythic Rares — open 480 boosters
Put another way, to get a single Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, 120 booster packs need to be opened. Even if you are buying Emrakul as a single from a dealer, that card still represents 120 opened booster packs. Whether they were drafted, busted, opened in sealed — whatever — singles came first from booster packs, and those booster packs were opened in some manner.
Let’s move on and look at effects.
Effect of Mythics on Limited Play
By far, the best effect Mythics has had on Magic is in allowing for powerful creatures and spells while not destroying Limited play. That’s s a bit of hyperbole, but let me explain. Think about Baneslayer Angel in M10 Limited. If you have her, she’s insane. If you pay against her, you generally just slump in your chair.
Pre-Mythics, in a triple main Expert Set draft, players would open 24 rares. With 88 rares in the set, someone was opening any given rare about once per three and a half drafts. With Mythics added to the mix, you can expect to have a Baneslayer Angel appear once every five drafts. You might argue that one in five drafts is still too often, but it is better than seeing one every three drafts.
In Limited play, the effect of different rarities cannot be overstated. I have been drafting the Classic sets online, recently. (NIX TIX is nice!) A draft format with cards at the wrong rarities can be a bit unbalanced. For example, in Mirage, Kaervek’s Torch, an XR burn spell that goes to the head, is common. In Urza’s Saga, Pestilence is common. Both are very good, and their presence skews a lot of drafts. In later sets — those more tuned for limited play — Fireball and Pyrohemia (the red Pestilence) were both uncommons and had a less corrosive effect on those limited formats.
Mark Rosewater listed some reasons for making a card Mythic. Limited play is another, and might be why some cards in Rise are Mythic. Vengevine may be an example. Imagine the effect of the Mighty Veggie on Limited if it were not Mythic. I have not had a lot of opportunity to play with Vengevine so far, but based on what I have seen so far, it is not too difficult to get it to regrowth in Limited.
Effect on Card Value
I had written a couple of paragraphs on this, but I really didn’t say anything new. The impacts are pretty obvious, and the reasons are well known. The scarcity of Mythics has depressed the value of rares. Put another way, rares today are priced like uncommons in past years. Only the good ones are worth anything.
The other impact of this change is that supporting yourself drafting is a lot harder, (unless you do many dozen drafts.) The reason is that, although the average (mean) value of the cards in the packs is roughly comparable, the median value has dropped. What do I mean — well, let’s create some simplified card sets, with differing sell prices, to explain.
Set A has 30 cards.
10 cards that sell for $12.00
10 cards that sell for $6.00
10 cards that sell for $3.00
Set B has 30 cards.
3 cards that sell for $50.00
8 cards that sell for $5.00
19 cards that sell for $1.00
In each case, the average (mean) value of the cards is $7.00. However, if you open a small number of packs, say a half-dozen, the odds say that you are likely to wind up with far less value opening packs from Set B than Set A. Set B is much more of a lottery — you either get almost nothing or you win big opening a small number of packs. With Set B, you have to open far more packs to wind up close to average value.
This is very relevant if you try to fund your Limited play by reselling your cards.
Effect on Card Availability
The question of whether players can get cards has two main aspects, and Mythics affect both. The first aspect is affordability. The second is availability.
Affordability is a real issue. Standard is getting really expensive if you want to play a winning deck. The UWR Planeswalkers deck that won has a ton of Mythics, and it costs a lot of money. However, player numbers are still growing. So long as that continues, then affordability is not a huge problem. Sure, it is unfortunate for players that do not have the money to play the best decks. It is also unfortunate that I cannot afford to compete in the America’s Cup yacht races. From the perspective of the game as a whole, unfortunate to an individual is not a critical problem.
The relevant question is when high costs become enough of a problem for enough people that the game as a whole suffers. I don’t know the answer, but I am pretty sure that Wizards tracks that very closely.
The second problem is that cards are simply not available to players, regardless of price. I’m talking about cards that are sold out everywhere, and are being snapped up as soon as they are in stock. Since there are fewer Mythics opened per booster, they will be even less available early in the season. For something like US Nationals, which happens less than a month after Rise of the Eldrazi hit the streets, this can create shortages. As I write this, Vengevine is sold out at SCG, and I don’t know of any local vendors with any in stock. I was planning on playing a green deck at Nats, but I’m not going to be able to get the Vengevines. I probably am not going to be able to get Gideons either. That is a problem, and one which Mythics have made worse.
Mythics did not create the problem, however. Looking back over the lists of decks from States and Regionals in the years before Mythics, I see decklists from players of all calibers with random cards simply because they could not get the cards they wanted. For example, the year the Kooki-Jooki deck won Wisconsin states, the winner played sub-optimal sideboard cards simply because the cards they had proxied for playtesting were unavailable. Mythics may make this problem a bit worse, but it is a perpetual problem.
The big question is how many decks will be affected at US National Qualifiers. It’s less than two weeks away.
First, let’s look at some decks from German National Qualifiers. I’ll include the link to the Decklist, and just summarize the cards.
Mythic Conscription — First – Patrick Dickmann
Mythics: 13, including Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Rares: 33
Odds you can get this: If you have Jace, should be no problem. This deck really shows the difference between Tier 1 Mythics and more typical rares. This deck runs Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which is the bottleneck, and Eldrazi Conscription. Conscription is a rare from the newest set, but it is both cheap and there are plenty in stock.
Jund — 2nd, 7th and 8th place — Konstantin Lorenz
Mythics: none
Rares: 28
Odds you can get this: Basilisk Collars and Raging Ravines are the closest thing to a scarce card, and they are in stock in large numbers.
U/W Control – 3rd place and 5th place — Alex Hottmann
Mythics: 8 — and no Gideons in this list.
Rares: 22
Odds you can get this: High. Elspeth and Jace, the Mind Sculptor are the only scarce cards.
Mythic — 4th and 6th place, Sebastian Mucke
Mythics: 17, including Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Elspeth, Baneslayer Angel, Rafiq of the Many, and Lotus Cobra
Rares: 24
Odds you can get this: Playsets of Baneslayer Angel, Lotus Cobra, Knight of the Reliquary, etc. are not for the faint of wallet, but the cards are available.
Let’s move on to the latest SCG Open, from Atlanta last weekend.
U/W/R Planeswalker Control — 1st and 3rd place, Lewis Laskin
Mythics: let’s look at the planeswalker suite.
3 Ajani Vengeant
3 Elspeth, Knight-errant
3 Gideon Jura
3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
Good luck getting the Gideon Juras. Jaces are in stock, at the moment, provided you don’t mind paying $70 each.
U/G Polymorph — 5th place, SCG Open Atlanta, Tanner Lange
Mythics: 8, including both Jaces and Iona
Rares: 10
Odds you can get this: This is pretty easy, if you — cue déjà vu theme music — have a couple copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Let’s look at some decklists you may not have seen. These are from the Midwest Masters event in Des Moines last weekend. We’ll start with a Jund list with some unexpected Mythics.
Monumental Jund
Chris Miller, 1st After Swiss
3 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
3 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Raging Ravine
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
Sideboard:
2 Grim Discovery
3 Deathmark
2 Duress
2 Thought Hemorrhage
2 Terminate
4 Dragon’s Claw
Second place was a slightly more typical Jund, but it also packed the Monument.
Monumental Jund
Louis Kaplan, 2nd after swiss
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Vengevine
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Terminate
4 Blightning
4 Forest
3 Swamp
2 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Rootbound Crag
3 Raging Ravine
2 Dragonskull
Sideboard:
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Thought Hemorrhage
4 Duress
4 Deathmark
UW Control
Jason Golliher, 3rd After Swiss
4 Wall Of Omens
3 Sphinx Of Jwar Isle
4 Spreading Seas
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Day Of Judgment
2 Martial Coup
2 Path To Exile
3 Mind Spring
1 Negate
3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2 Gideon Jura
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
3 Sejiri Refuge
3 Tectonic Edge
7 Plains
6 Island
Sideboard:
3 Flashfreeze
2 Celestial Purge
1 Wall Of Denial
2 Jace Beleren
3 Negate
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Cancel
2 Kor Firewalker
Mono-Green
Aaron Speer, 8th after swiss
4 Arbor Elf
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Nissa’s Chosen
4 Leatherback Baloth
4 Elvish Archdruid
3 Lodestone Golem
4 Vengevine
4 Nissa Revane
19 Forest
3 Oran-Rief, The Vastwood
Sideboard:
4 Vines Of Vastwood
2 Naturalize
3 Slingbow Trap
3 Pelakka Wurm
3 Great Stable Stag
The missing decks are either variants on UW Planeswalkers or yet another Jund decks packing Eldrazi Monument. Since this article is about Mythics, I find it amusing that the Mythic that almost took the win for most frequent in the Top 8 decklists from Des Moines, was Eldrazi Monument — three copies each in four different decks. However, Jace beat it out. Jace showed up in four decklists, with 13 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and two copies of Jace Beleren present. After that came seven Baneslayer Angels, four copies of Elspeth, four Gideon Juras, four Nissa Revane, two Ionas, one Garruk Wildspeaker and a couple random one-off Mythic Eldrazi in sideboards, there simply to hose mill decks.
It appears that those players had no problem getting the cards they needed. On the other hand, I have no data on what those players who did not make Top 8. Maybe those players could not get the Mythics, so they did not make Top 8.
Or maybe not.
On that decisive note, I’m heading out.
PRJ
“one million words” online
PS: one subject I did not discuss was whether a card “felt” Mythic or not. I speculated that Vengevine might be Mythic because of Limited concerns, but that is as far as I want to go. “Feeling Mythic” is too subjective. It’s almost entirely a matter of taste. It’s like choosing a favorite artist or song. A better example — here are five desserts. Think of very well made versions, and decide which ones are “Mythic.”
Crème Brule
Chocolate ice cream*
New York cheesecake
Baked Alaska
Apple Pie a la mode
* Chocolate ice cream other than Zanzibar Chocolate from the Chocolate Shoppe, that is. Zanzibar Chocolate ice cream is Mythic. Try it — but be warned. Once you eat it, there is no going back. All other chocolate ice cream tastes like dust and ashes afterwards. Believe me — I am an ice cream addict, and chocolate was my favorite.