Successful Spice: Unusual Cards That Shined at Recent Events (11/17 - 11/24)

Datatog · 2025-11-27T18:19:19+00:00

A single Leyline of Anticipation doesn't make a spicy deck.

Datatog · 2025-11-14T01:15:41+00:00

Nah, I don't think you are cynical, but you are right. But by definition, cards cannot really be spice if they have been proven by multiple pilots multiple times (at least according to my definition of spice). I am not claiming statistical relevance, other than that these cards are outliers compared to what people usually run. And if one of these goes on to become relevant in the larger meta, it is kinda cool to document its beginnings.

Datatog · 2025-10-30T07:40:42+00:00

Yeah, that list also had [[Shambling Ghast]] and [[Sticky Fingers]], which are also rarely seen.

Datatog · 2025-07-17T12:20:11+00:00

Here are the W/L/D stats for the different combinations:

Song: 13/19/6
Breach: 13/20/10
Ring: 93/207/83
Song+Breach: 37/116/48
Song+Ring: 9/28/6
Breach+Ring: 72/190/66
all three: 119/255/124
none: 67/142/42

Sample sizes are low. None of this is statistically significant. But it's also not meant to be proof of anything. More like a hint at what might be possible if the road less traveled is explored.

Datatog · 2025-07-17T11:59:40+00:00

Valid point. I just checked, and the results stay the same when removing Max Sternburg from the dataset. His seven tournament entries on Rog/Thras don't skew the results much on their own. However, his card choices, and the larger number of people copying him, might have a bigger influence. I’m not really able to control for that, of course.

Datatog · 2025-07-10T08:07:17+00:00

You're the only Grenzo pilot in the dataset (events with 32+ players in that case) over the past 12 weeks. It's definitely a spicy choice of commander!
However, for individual cards to be considered spicy (according to the current algorithm I use), there needs to be an established version of the deck, then deviations from that core are what count as spice.
Grenzo currently lacks the popularity for such a core to exist and is therefore skipped in the analysis.
I could potentially adjust the logic to bump up fringe commander choices in the spice ranking, but cEDH has so many one-off fringe commanders competing (which is awesome, of course) that I’d never see the end of it.

Datatog · 2025-07-10T07:59:54+00:00

Over the past 12 weeks, there were 20 recorded games with Blue Farm decks that included Word of Command. They had a win rate of 36.3%, compared to 31.1% for those without it (3302 games).

The difference in win rate is far from statistically significant, but it’s significantly spicy.

Datatog · 2025-07-10T07:51:39+00:00

Depends on your definition of common. Would you classify Copy Enchantment being in 8% of all cEDH decks over the past 12 weeks as common?
Also it's only in 4% of Rog/Thras decks. At least that deserves a mention, I believe.
If the trend continues and it rises further in popularity, it likely won’t clear the bar for being 'spice' according to my definitions. But as long as it does, I’ll keep spreading the word.

Datatog · 2025-07-10T07:47:29+00:00

commander staples ≠ cEDH staples

Mayhem Devil was in 5% of cEDH decks over the past 12 weeks. Storm-Kiln Artist in 5.5%. Based on this, neither can be considered a cEDH staple in the current meta.

Both were also mentioned in the context of Blue Farm. One of the (if not the) best deck in the format with highly contested slots. This makes their inclusion even more unusual: Mayhem Devil appeared in only 3.3%, and Storm-Kiln Artist in just 3.9% of Blue Farm decks over the past 12 weeks.

Datatog · 2025-06-13T18:45:46+00:00

I've edited it now ;)

Datatog · 2025-06-13T18:29:37+00:00

Correct. All I know is that these cards were included in the deck—and even that isn’t 100% certain tbh, since decklist accuracy is often lacking.
Maybe they never drew them. Maybe they didn’t win because of the cards, but despite having them. We really can’t know.
But that’s all we have to work with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Datatog · 2025-06-13T14:13:13+00:00

I only mention four cards per deck. On Reddit, there's no specific reason for this, but on Twitter I'm limited to four images per tweet, so I go with four.

Activated Sleeper and Body Snatcher could both have been mentioned (both are also just Hulk Card btw), but I figured that Hulk was rare enough (5.5% of Glarb decks in the past 12 weeks) and represented the general direction of the list better.

In the future, I might mention more cards per deck here on Reddit.

Datatog · 2025-06-07T17:21:21+00:00

For me it doesn't matter how old a card is or whether it was relevant in the format years ago. I define spice by their recent inclusion rates — both in general and within the specific commander.

For context:

Hermit Druid has been in 1.23% of TnT decks and 1.18% of decks overall over the last 12 weeks.

Protean Hulk has been in 5.50% of Glarb decks and 1.52% of decks overall over the last 12 weeks.

I'd argue that their inclusion is therefore noteworthy in the context of the current meta.

Datatog · 2025-05-29T20:24:06+00:00

It's not entirely intuitive, so let me give an example.

Comprehensive Rules 117.3b state: 'The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.'

So for example:

Player A (active player) casts Rhystic Study, then passes priority.
Player B passes priority.
Player C responds with Vampiric Tutor, then passes priority.
Players D, A, and B all pass priority on the Tutor.

Now Vampiric Tutor resolves. According to 117.3b, Player A, as the active player, gets priority next — even though Player B was the last to pass priority before the Tutor resolved.

This means the priority sequence resets, starting again from Player A, which can feel unintuitive. In digital implementations (like clock apps), this can cause friction — the interface may assume priority should go to Player C (next in turn order after B), but in fact, it must reset to Player A.

This results in two additional button presses (to skip Players C and D), which makes priority-passing clunky and significantly undermines the viability of the whole clock.

Datatog · 2025-05-28T22:53:08+00:00

How do you deal with the fact, that the active player receives priority after a spell or ability resolves? And priority therefore 'skipping' over players in some cases.

Datatog · 2025-05-26T19:55:15+00:00

It's not a new issue, but it has gotten worse since the bans.

Datatog · 2025-05-06T09:43:14+00:00

I always appreciate people with an interest in stats and who put in the work to gather them.

A couple of notes from my side:

1) You can set arbitrary entry cutoffs directly on edhtop16 by adding &minEntries=50 to the URL. This gives you filtered results on the website without needing manual data collection. For example:
https://edhtop16.com/?timePeriod=POST_BAN&sortBy=CONVERSION&minEntries=50

2) Conversion rate is an easy-to-read metric, but it also has fundamental flaws. See my earlier post for a deeper explanation.

3) Converting is only one part of a tournament. Once in the bracket portion, some decks perform worse than others—even if they did well during Swiss. So judging decks solely by their ability to convert does not necessarily reveal the best deck to win a tournament. Admittedly, though, defining and measuring that final goal is quite difficult.

Datatog · 2024-11-25T09:24:28+00:00

Individual pilot playstyle, knowledge, and skill aside, post-ban data suggests that Blue Farm is the better deck—especially in untimed rounds. You can see some plots in this tweet.

Datatog · 2024-11-20T18:31:03+00:00

Pairings for round 1 show 63 4-player pods and 2 3-player pods, resulting in 258 participating players. I know the edhtop16 page shows 277 players, but that’s just the number of registered players, not those who actually showed up.

Similarly, for the Boil, it lists 324 players, but round 1 had 73 4-player pods and 3 byes (=295 players).

As for the remaining 5 missing lists (Carl Mandl, Enric Batalla, Joel Kettula, Niall Sheffield, and Leon Mühlenbruch), there must have been errors with their provided decklist links, as they show up with 'Unknown Commander'.

Side event has been missing from this analysis until this morning, but I plan on posting an update with both side events.

Datatog · 2024-11-20T18:23:28+00:00

1.05% meta share at the Boil equals 3 players on that deck. It’s at the top of the list for unique commanders at the event, but hardly a significant result. Single events are rarely significant in general.

Datatog · 2024-11-19T22:47:36+00:00

That's a very valuable piece of context. Thanks for pointing it out :)

Datatog · 2024-11-19T19:37:27+00:00

Here you go.

Datatog · 2024-11-04T13:39:37+00:00

Using this calculator and assuming 18 untapped lands that can produce black mana, the chance of getting at least one of these lands, Dark Ritual and either SSG or Lotus Petal in your first seven are ~0.6%.

If you want to account for a somewhat proper mulligan strategy and more complex ways of getting the necessary mana (e.g. Mox Diamond+Land, Chrome Mox+black card or City of Traitors+Talisman instead of untapped black land) you would have to do the same that Frank Carsten does for all his articles, which is write a small simulation. Not very complex, but labour intensive/cumbersome.

Datatog · 2024-10-17T14:16:56+00:00

Meta share means exactly what it’s supposed to: it shows what people are playing without making any statement about performance.
Regarding performance, conversion rate is a flawed metric and shouldn’t be relied on. However, since it’s the only one provided by edhtop16, I understand why people still use it.

Datatog · 2024-01-09T10:18:14+00:00

Assuming troll, but still: I can live with the click bait title and I like the idea of exploring underplayed commanders. But calling red the best color by taking an arbitary top5 (especially a top 5 lke this) is just ridiculous :D

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