Episode 101— June 13th, 2022

A Deep Dive on Disruption Density in Cube

6:28
Pack 1, pick 1 from the Bun Magic Cube
15:07
Definitions of categories of disruptive cards: hard removal, conditional removal, soft removal, stack interaction, hand interaction, and grave hate
24:16
How has the Bun Magic Cube’s disruptive suite changed since January of last year?
32:12
What disruption has been cut from the Bun Magic Cube?
37:48
What is the makeup of the targets for removal spells in the cube? What does the toughness and mana value distribution look like?
50:43
Concluding thoughts

After teasing it on their Centennial Retrospective, Andy and Anthony are revisiting the topic of one of their notable past episodes, number 31: Bread and Butter Breakdown. With some small revisions to his categorization system, Andy tallies up the density of disruptive cards in the current iteration of his Bun Magic Cube and compares them to the numbers from January of last year, with some surprising results. What starts as a nuts-and-bolts discussion of how the density and quality of disruption affects an environment turns into a reflection on how much Andy’s cube has changed in just 17 months and how much our biases about cards influences our assessment of their power level.

Disruptive Card Counts from the Bun Magic Cube (Spoiler Alert!):

January 2021
June 2022
Delta
Hard Removal
36 (10%)
19 (~5%)
-17 (~4%)
Conditional Removal
?
55 (~15%)
?
Soft Removal
?
11 (~3%)
?
Total “Non-Hard” Removal
80 (~22%)
66 (~18%)
-14 (~4%)
Hand Interaction
10 (~3%)
10 (~3%)
0
Stack Interaction
21 (~6%)
18 (5%)
-3 (<1%)
Non-Creature Removal
?
4 (~1%)
?
Graveyard Interaction
?
6 (~2%)
?

Toughness and Mana Value Distribution of Creatures from the Bun Magic Cube (Spoiler Alert!):

Toughness
Mana Value
0
N/A
3 (~2%)
1
57 (~45%)
44 (~35%)
2
40 (~31%)
49 (~38%)
3
10 (~8%)
24 (~19%)
4
6 (~5%)
4 (~3%)
>4
6 (~5%)
4 (~3%)
Variable
8 (~6%)
N/A

Discussed in this episode:

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