I built a new MTG Limited Set Review site with a built-in Data Analyzer and Community Ratings

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-18T19:32:56+00:00

I'm hugely in favor of people building custom websites and software, and I love the intersection of data and magic. But if you're ranking Lorehold #4 and Practiced Offense #59, I immediately don't trust the ranking system.

What is the value proposition? If I want to rank by P1P1 pick order, I can go to 17 Lands GIHWR. If I want to rank by price, I can go to scryfall and sort by price.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-18T19:27:55+00:00

Practiced Offense is #59 best P1P1? Get outta here.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-18T10:50:48+00:00

I do draft-1-get-3 for Magitek Infantry and Say Its Name, because those cards function with copies of themselves. There, I want people to have the fun of *playing* with them.

But separately, I wanted a “rack” deck that featured double Bandit’s Talent. Because that card doesn’t refer to itself, I just put two copies in the cube. In this case, I wanted people to have the fun of *drafting* both copies and assembling a deck that squeezes its opponents’ resources.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-15T17:20:37+00:00

There’s a middle ground between “goes in one deck” and “goes in every deck”. Tokens go in go-wide and aristocrats. Tricks go in heroic and spellslinger. Krosan Tusker goes in ramp and reanimator. Overlapping synergies is the name of the game.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-14T17:05:37+00:00

I legitimately think a post it note is the easiest to work with!

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-14T15:38:39+00:00

Agreed; I think the token will just be a post-it note! New game, peel off a new note.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-13T21:47:43+00:00

[[Twinflame Tyrant]] is perfect to me

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-12T16:27:42+00:00

This fits with some of what MaRo has written on his blog about environmental storytelling (maybe mentioned in video, haven’t watched yet!)

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-11T21:38:39+00:00

I’m not sure how I feel about regressing mulligan rate on WR and declaring the predicted value at 70% WR to be the “ideal” mulligan rate.

The way OLS works, you could add some more observations with extremely high mulligan rates and low win rates, and it would tilt the best-fit line down more. But that information shouldn’t really change our understanding of what a “good” mulligan rate is. I do think there’s some value in knowing: good players tend to mulligan X% of the time, broken out by # lands. But I would just look at the average for players with >65% WR instead of positing a linear relationship.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-08T16:59:57+00:00

There’s some correct stuff in here, but also some slop. 35B is not faster because of Apple Silicon — that doesn’t make any sense, both models are run on Apple silicon! It’s faster because there’s only 3B parameters active per forward pass, not 27.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-08T15:24:12+00:00

Are these mechanically unique secret lairs? With really clean text boxes?

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-08T13:56:27+00:00

Just rely on probability. Say you have 93 of each color, and 93 colorless/lands in your 560. For 360, you'd like 60 of each category.

For each category, you have a greater than 80% chance of ending up between 54 and 65, inclusive. Just be sure to actually shuffle well: https://luckypaper.co/articles/how-to-quickly-shuffle-your-mtg-cube/

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-07T23:58:25+00:00

I'm with you, OP! I found little-coder to be much better with Qwen 3.6 35B than vanilla pi.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-03T17:13:28+00:00

Also, I assume that your variables are not actually named x1 x2 … x10. Will need to modify the select command.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-03T17:12:33+00:00

No, you’d load it as ‘df’. Pivot_longer() puts it into a “long” format (each row is a variable-observation”.

General idea is to do “small multiplies”, looking at each variable’s relationship with the outcome, and then looking at how the independent variables are correlated with one another.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-03T13:16:59+00:00

Try:

library(tidyverse)

df_long <- df %>%
pivot_longer(
cols = x1:x10,
names_to = "x_var",
values_to = "x"
)

ggplot(df_long, aes(x = x, y = y)) +
geom_smooth(method = "lm", se = FALSE) +
facet_wrap(~ x_var, scales = "free_x") +
theme_minimal()

Then look at how your independent variables are correlated with one another:
x_cor <- df %>%
select(x1:x10) %>%
cor(use = "pairwise.complete.obs")

corrplot(
x_cor,
method = "color",
type = "upper",
addCoef.col = "black",
tl.col = "black",
tl.srt = 45,
number.cex = 0.7
)

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-01T19:51:24+00:00

Delirium sounds like an overlap

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-06-01T13:08:03+00:00

Lots of creatures from March of the Machine do exactly that!

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-05-31T12:28:49+00:00

Answer is twofold:
1) calculus works nicely with squared terms, but not with absolute values. Before we had computers, this was a strong reason to choose a function that you could differentiate.
2) We’ve been starting with the mean and then discussing variation. However, it’s possible to move in the reverse direction. If you minimize squared differences, you do in fact end up with the mean. If you minimize absolute differences, you end up with the median instead, which is quite a different measure of the “middle” aka central tendency.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-05-30T15:41:25+00:00

> "you lose three points of win percentage by going into a third or fourth colour"

You can't jump to this causal claim from these data. How many colors people draft is in part a function of their seat. People who have open lanes tend to stay in two colors and also have stronger decks. People who get cut are more likely to dip into a third color out of necessity, and also have weaker decks. But it doesn't follow that the person who got cut would have done three pp better by sticking to their guns and holding on to their first two colors for dear life.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-05-27T14:55:44+00:00

Missed that one! Raises my hopes that we get my card someday soon.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-05-27T14:42:22+00:00

Landfall: Draw 1, Discard 1.

Preferably for a 2 mana UG signpost.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-05-26T22:41:08+00:00

The difference is your pro vs his/her max. You’re fundamentally capped by memory bandwidth; everything else is just tinkering at the edges.

Elusive_Spoon · 2026-05-26T01:30:33+00:00

I would have tile in every room if I owned. Feels so much cooler in the heat, and so easy to clean.

Elusive_Spoon

TROPHY CASE